


Hackity Hack

by Crowsister



Series: Low-Key [1]
Category: DCU (Comics), The Flash (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Complete, Gen, a family can be three dads and their pile of kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-03-06 05:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13404615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowsister/pseuds/Crowsister
Summary: Theo Soliani is an amateur hero going out on her first big case – figuring out the mystery behind a bank's vaults going empty. This seemed like an open-close case to a technopath like her, only it got weird the minute she decided to team up with someone to solve the case.AKA how the Key met and joined the Rogues. Joke subtitles include "Leonard Snart is the Crime Dad of Central City" and "How fast can the Rogues adopt a stray child?".





	1. In Which Theo Finds Exactly What She’s Not Looking For

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a project many, many, many months in the making. Technically years, if we go back far enough to Theo's origins back when I was first making Young Justice OCs. A lot of creative liberties have been taken here, since I don't like Young Justice's portrayal of Captain Cold in the few instances we do see him in the slightest. So I've made my own variants of the Rogues which are based off of a lot of different iterations. Some of the Rogues have been aged down to help establish different parallels between them and members of Young Justice. If people ask, I'll move up my priority to write my Rogues origin story further up my to-do list to explain how they've gotten to this point and why they're like this.
> 
> EDIT: I forgot earlier to give a big shoutout to my boyfriend and my sister for being impromptu betas for me for this project. They've been really patient with my bullshit and I super appreciate what they've done for me.

####  **Central City, MO** **  
****August 14th, 2014**

She looked over at her mentor, sitting in a Central City diner with him. Baron Winters – Winters was wearing his traditional old man, totally-not-an-immortal-sorcerer look: a really fine void black suit (probably made from a void dimension, if she had to guess), a light blue tie with a golden (probably real gold) tie clip, and a whole lot of “manly” jewelry to emphasize that he was rich and  _ totally-not-an-immortal-sorcerer. _ She wasn’t sure if he knew he looked like he recently re-retired from a long career of Las Vegas magic shows but was planning a comeback tour two springs from now or if he pulled that look together like that on purpose, just to be a showoff. Either way, the look made her very glad that she had turned down his “fashion advice”. She’d rather wear a grey hoodie and jeans any day of the week, not have his preferred long hair that her stepmom would’ve preened over with pride. With her helmet in as the Key, she’d prefer kind of dirty, sharply-clipped, and very short brown hair over looking like she had to spend an hour every morning pulling herself together. She didn’t care if there were  _ spells _ to fit all that hypothetical hair into her helmet. At least  _ she _ wasn’t overdressed for the 1950’s styled mom and pop diner they sat in. At least he didn’t bring Merlin the leopard to a diner. It had been awkward at the quaint coffee shop in Gotham to explain the leopard.

“So uh. You’re not really here-here, are you?” she asked, tapping a finger on the table. 

Winters laughed, his fire-like eyes glowing just a bit brighter. “Absolutely not. I told you of my curse. I am restricted to Wintersgate Manor. No, this is just a very complex apparition for your benefit. It’d be rude just to be a voice in your head and make you look like you’re talking to yourself.”

“But it’s also for  _ your _ benefit,” she replied, squinting at him as she tried to focus on the buzzing around them, feeling it in her skin more than hearing it. “I sense...something else about this.”

“Reach deep, young Theophania. You can sense it-”

Theo rolled her lime green eyes, holding up a hand. “There’s like...a ward around us? It’s...it’s um...”

“Where do you feel it first?”

“My mouth and ears, mostly. It’s all hazy and smoky around my mouth and...clearish around my ears? So...probably an auditory ward, for everyone else around us?”

Winters nodded with a chuckle, his deep-set wrinkles becoming more emphasized as he smiled. “Answer decisively, Theophania, but yes. It’s designed to mask our conversation. My enemies will think I’m still able to go out and about. To everyone else in this diner, we’re discussing the Central City Cougars’s victory in-”

“EW, you’re seriously having people think I care about  _ sports _ ?” Theo wrinkled her nose, spitting the word “sports” like it was a ball of mucus that had been stuck in the back of her throat. “First and foremost, I have  _ taste _ and you’re having me talk  _ sports _ ? Sports that’s not  _ hockey _ ?”

Winters began to laugh as Theo crossed her arms. She waited patiently as he laughed, pushing his empty plate towards her so he could crumple against the table to support his rich, belly-born laughter. It wasn’t the first time she brought him to a laughing state this hard: he seemed to find random statements amusing. At least this one was  _ supposed _ to be amusing: last time he laughed like this it was when she asked where the drinking water of Wintersgate came from and why it tasted like mint. Theo pretended to blow an imaginary strand of hair out of her face (despite the fact that her hair was cut too short to have strands in her face to begin with) as he sat up straight again.

“I knew taking an apprentice would do me good,” he chuckled, stroking his greying goatee. “It’s been too long. If it makes you feel better, Central City does not have a hockey team.”

“Whatever,” she said, knowing he was lying. Her favorite team was  _ from _ here. “What are we doing here, teach? Last I checked, Central City is like...science-based heroics and villainy. Which, sure, this Key can unlock pretty easy, but that’s the thing – it’d be  _ easy _ and I don’t think you want me having this stuff easy.”

“Oh, I brought you here to set you on an independent study course, of sorts.” Winters smiled. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want my teaching to simply be me lecturing you in diners across the United States, correct?”

“I mean...like I told the you know who, I want to do good. I’ve got these powers, so...yeah, I’d get antsy just listening to lectures. Wintersgate is nice, but...I’d get myself into trouble being too close to Washington DC and then the you know who would do whatever and I honestly haven’t thought far after that in the hypotheticals beyond that I would immensely  _ dislike _ anything they could do in that scenario,” Theo rambled, ending in a huff. “So...sure! Practical stuff, I’m down. I’d be able to like...get talks with you like this from time to time, right?”

“Of course. Unless I’m unavailable, but I foresee that I’ll have a lot of free time on my hands. Though I’m planning that already with putting your computer lessons that you’ve given me to good use.”

“Okay. That makes me feel better since...well...in terms of magic mentors the you know who could put me with, well um...Dr. Fate scares me, actually come to think of it I’d get jumpy and stupid around all the you know who, and Zatara’s missing, so I’d prefer you as my appointed spell caster adult on call. It probably helps that you’re not part of the you know who.”

“Probably. You see, I have this little problem-”

“Yes, it’s a curse,  _ I’m highly aware. _ The thirteen year old in me is jealous, she’d  _ love _ a curse that’d keep her inside the house. Anyway, what’s step one to this independent study course?”

“Step one is to look on the television screen over my shoulder right about...now.”

Theo looked over Winters’s very clean suit shoulder and at the breaking news report. 

“This is Iris West-Allen with GBS news and here in Central City, we have a mystery on our hands at the Lightning Trust bank. During a normal confrontation between the Flash and the Rogues, the Rogues made a run for the vaults of the bank to find them already empty. In the chaos and confusion, the Rogues managed to escape from both the authorities and the Flash. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.”

The TV went back to its baseball and Theo looked over at Winters. “Wait. Who cares that someone stole money from the bank?” she asked. “That shit’s all insured-”

“It’s the principle of the matter, Theophania,” Winters answered. “They stole from their fellow man. That’s a sin.”

“Yeah and I’m fairly sure that the act of banking itself used to be considered a sin-”

“Given I was there during that time period, I can tell you that it was charging interest and not banking that was a sin.” Winters cleared his throat. “But I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware you thought I had less experience than you on this matter. Perhaps, you can go out on your own, with no help whatsoever.”

They stared at each other for a long time. Theo tried to sit up tall, keep her eyes locked into his, but she slowly began to deflate. It started with her shoulders slowly rolling forward, then her back falling into a slouch to make herself look smaller, then her elbow made its way onto the table to support her head as she leaned into her hand, diffidently breaking eye contact with him. Winters never faltered, the whole time they had their staredown. 

“Alright,” she replied. “Step two to helping the bank get the money back?”

“Step two is putting the gear in your pack to work and seeing if you can get your own perspective on the crime scene because the Flash and the police aren’t going to get a lead any time soon and they’ll need help unlocking the secret.”

Theo rubbed her back, feeling the metal outline of her key embedded into her skin. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up with the puns. I’ll go back to the hotel room and wait out the investigation that’s probably going on right now, then get at everything when it’s night time.”

“They’ll have disturbed the crime scene by then.”

“Nah, they’ll have set up whatever it is that they need to do to help them do their jobs and sleep at night, thinking they’ve done work when the Flash is probably running himself ragged doing their jobs. They can swab for fingerprints and all that forensics stuff, but I’m sure that they won’t move the computers and cameras by the time I get there. And that’s what I need.” Theo crossed her arms, looking over at her black messenger bag on the seat next to her. “I can look through footage faster than all those pigs. Probably not as fast as the Flash, but he can go his way and I’d be happier that he didn’t know I was around at all.”

Winters chuckled and she looked over to him. “You’ll have a lesson about plans.” He waved a hand at her. “All in good time, Theophania. All in good time.”

* * *

 

The Key was a pretty inconspicuous look, all things considered. Her first instinct had been to replicate Shadowrun decker, but Winters wasn’t so keen on the full look. Especially the exposed face with only just some variety of glasses to make a secret identity. Asymmetry may fool most computer facial recognition, but it was a double-edged sword in that sentient beings were able to remember her better by the distinguishable details.

_ “Secrets are good to keep, while you can,” _ he’d said.  _ “Look at how jealously Zatara hid Zatanna’s existence from the world. Look at how that gives her an edge in her days now as a Justice League member. Now, look at John Constantine, Zatanna’s male generational counterpart in the world of magic-based heroes. He had a secret identity for about three months before he let it go and now every spirit, demon, and paparazzi reporter can find him if they work hard enough. And he lets them because it’s all some kind of game to him. All I’m saying is, look at your life, look at your choices, do your hypotheticals. Which one do you want to live with?” _

Turns out she wasn’t up for the hellblazing life that was having no secret identity. Keeping Theo Soliani and the Key separate was pretty essential for her old friends as Theo. If, say, Batman found out who her past associates and friends were, she didn’t want to be in a position to get in a conflict over them and her past (and possibly future) activities as both Theo and the Key. So, she went with a classic.

Using her magic and smarts, she’d made a costume out of a variety of things both lying about Wintersgate and ordered specifically for this purpose. Winters was keen on watching her work, how she took everything apart with both her hands and her magic. Wayne Tech kevlar vest, a couple of helmets (motorcycle, US army, and a suit of armor’s knightly helm, all mixed into one helmet), several Q-phones and laptops and computer towers, some defensive wards (courtesy of Winters). The transmutation of putting the clothes together was rough and difficult for Theo to do and there were several instances of Theo screaming in frustration at Winters for  _ him _ to do it since he was  _ so talented _ , but he wouldn’t. When all of that was over, adapting the tech into the suit was much more Theo’s speed: packing the cpus into the suit, using the towers themselves as additional armor with wires snaking through the suit to hook up to the Q-Phones on her wrists. One black matte paint job later, and the Key was born. 

She practiced with Winters for months before he let her loose onto the world, trying to find her magical center outside of her magic touch with technology. Pyromancy was quickly thrown out the window after she lit a very old, very expensive rug on fire. She did alright reading spells from books, adapting quickly to more ancient spells over anything newer. The best spell she pulled together was an ancient Themysciran healing spell after Winters got a little too zealous in a sparring match. Slowly, they figured out that if it came out of Greece or a Hellenic culture (like the Amazons that Wonder Woman hailed from), the spell was castable by her magic with enough practice with sounding out the Ancient Greek incantations. That didn’t make spellcasting any easier for her, but it was nice to know that there was a modicum of hope for her to be able to do more than be a universal remote to every technology since the Middle Ages.

Winters theorized her magical center being Hellenic in nature had to do with the origin of her technopathy: the electrum key embedded in her back, the head of the key taking up most of her upper back and embedded into her shoulder blades. The key’s tip ended at her sacrum, right where her lumbar spine ended. The ridges, notches, and teeth of the key shifted constantly and Winters hadn’t been able to figure out a pattern behind the key’s shifting. Despite being cool to the touch and entirely metal, the key moved with her, not inhibiting her movement. The key was a part of her, like an organ on the surface of her skin. And because she got it from a group of immortal sorcerers who rose to power in Ancient Greece, the key influenced her magic towards Hellenic varieties of magic. Winters theorized that if she had the time and ability, she could pull off Atlantean magic, but she kicked him in the knee before he could throw her into the ocean to test his theory.

The costume wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t glamorous (it was a patchwork mess, if she was being honest with herself), but Theo didn’t have the Justice League’s tailor on speed dial and she wanted something to both keep her alive and keep her personal identity secret. The costume, along with a few enchanted charms that Winters donated (a crow’s feather for invisibility, a packet of salt for containing demons, and a vial of water from a mysterious somewhere that Winters wouldn’t elaborate on for what he called “testing hearts”), would be her loadout for the time being.

At about 6 o’clock at night, the Key would flush the hotel security system with footage of Theo Soliani relaxing at the pool, headphones in and ignoring the world. Winters would have an apparition of her doing exactly that, the footage matching his spell. A favor from Winters, one she knew she’d have to work without in the future, but for now having a bored immortal sorcerer willing to run interference was  _ very _ nice for setting up an alibi.

The Key waited on a street or two away from the bank that had been robbed, her body one place and her mind another. Her mind was briefly mixed into the camera feed of the convenience store across the way from the bank, connecting her suit to the feed so she could observe the cops more subtly.

About 34 and a half minutes later, they packed up and left. She tapped the charm attached to her left gauntlet, the crow’s feather glowing cyan momentarily before her arm faded out of her vision. She slowly descended down into an alley and checked the reflective surfaces, to make sure the invisibility charm was working. Then she went into the bank, the bank opening its security arms to her.

She registered herself as an admin with a brush of her hand to the nearest computer panel, shuddering as she felt her magic pull her thoughts and translate them to buzzing data. Her body became visible, to stress her energy reserves less on maintaining the charm so she’d be able to get the data. The Key walked closer to where she could sense the thrum of data. It was almost like a second sight, but not quite. She couldn’t so much as  _ see _ the data as  _ know _ where it is. Like walking in the dark and knowing a table is there, a hand held out in front of her to make sure she didn’t bump into it. 

The first month she had her powers, it was killer being inside a city because the data called, pulsed, overloading her head with too many images, too much noise, too much  _ everything _ . Wintersgate having rooms in it that had their own magical pocket dimensions, away from technology, were necessary for her to be awake for normal hours. Now? It was like walking into a metaphorical apartment where she learned how to maneuver around sharp table corners and everything in the dark, careful not to wake up a metaphorical roommate by turning on the light.

The Key made it to the security room. Being closer to the servers with the footage would make it faster for her, less time being taken in a direct upload than siphoning the data through her magic wifi to her brain and then to her suit’s storage. An additional bonus was that a direct upload meant she could just use a cord and  _ that _ afforded her the ability to be aware of her surroundings. And with this town? It made her  _ laugh  _ to think about going blank here.

She’d have a few hours, at least. Someone from the station was bound to check the scene and the last thing she wanted was someone assuming-

“So, the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime after all! Wow, this must be amateur hour!”

The Key quickly pulled a spare security monitor off the wall with her magic, floating it in front of her to block a spray of...silly string?

She looked around her makeshift shield, raising her eyebrows behind her helmet at the garish colors of the costume in front of her. “Trickster, I presume?”

“Wow, at least you did your research!” he laughed, shifting from foot to foot. About a half a foot taller than her, stood the Trickster of Central City and, perhaps more importantly, a Rogue. Rogues don’t travel alone. He didn’t have much to protect his identity beyond a navy blue domino mask on his scrawny, pale face. He wore a long trench coat, but instead of a uniform singular fabric, the coat was made out of several different patterned patches (plaid, stripes, spots, polka dots, the  _ works _ all in navy and gold). Underneath the coat, she could catch glimpses of  _ more _ stripes and polka dots on the shirt he wore. The pants he wore seemed to be a sanctuary of sorts, just simple plaid yellow and gold patterned. As if he needed to be more of an eyesore. “Hey, hey, what do you call a nail in a bad situation?”

“Someone yelling at the tool-” she gestured at him with a hand, disconnecting the data drive from her suit so she could move better “-to get bent?”

Trickster laughed as he reached into his coat and pulled out a bag of screws. She made sure he could notice that she was looking between the bag and his grinning face, visibly turning the front of her helmet so he’d get the full effect of what she was trying to emote. “Screwed?  _ Really _ ? Of all the bad nail jokes-”

He laughed as he threw the bag at her. She dodged, rolling and moving to clock him. “Seriously, where’s the rubber chicken?” she asked, pulling back a hand to slug him. 

He laughed, dodging under her punch. “I wanted to try heat-seeking tech!”

She jolted, looking behind her to notice the screws were  _ flying _ at her. She reached out with her hand, shutting off the miniaturized flight systems inside of the screws. They clattered to the ground.

Her own words came back to her.  _ “Last I checked, Central City is like...science-based heroics and villainy.” _ She smirked under her helmet, holding out a hand to Trickster.

“You know,” she drawled, taking in his mixed expression of disbelief and pouting, “I was thinking of trying to nail you with a pun, but  _ screw it _ .”

She snapped and all the toys he had that she could sense, the ones with electronics – the fuzzy dice handcuffs, the teddy bear robots, a television remote, and a deck of cards – responded to her commands. She used the fuzzy dice handcuffs to restrain him, taking the silly string covered screen and laying the cemented silly string over his legs so he wouldn’t be moving anywhere.

“Oh, you’re punny-”

“Shut it. Where’s the other Rogues?” She surveyed the room, just to double check. One door in, so it was one way in and one way out. It was just her, him, and the security setup. “You people are never alone-”

“Damn right,” she heard a deep voice rasp behind her before she was plucked up from behind. The Key struggled in the iron tight hold of two thick arms, each arm about the thickness of her thighs and covered in silver reflective cloth. The arms were wrapped around her stomach, firmly holding her in place against someone’s very broad and solid chest in a fully bear hug. Her legs wiggled off the ground, kicking at whatever she could reach. Then, like being hit with a ton of bricks in her brain, she could feel several pieces of technology in the room, going limp in her captor’s arms as she closed her eyes and analyzed the new tech in the room. Their purposes slowly came to her as her sense of everything around her faded.

“Who’s this?” a gruff voice barked. A cold gun with an engine to generate cold everywhere and anywhere. Not sucking heat, that’d imply that the gun took the heat elsewhere and did something with it, but  _ killing it _ where it was.

Trickster cackled, “I dunno, boss! Didn’t say, but they’re punny! And super unfair! Can we keep ‘em as our new itty bit?” 

“Not until we know...” The voices started the fade, gruff falling into slightly different gruff as she found a flamethrower.

“Can I light this...” She needed to speed things up. Can’t waste time.

“No, Mi...” Had what she needed. Need to go  _ now _ .

The Key opened her eyes. She pulled herself together, gritting her teeth as she summoned her captors’ weapons to her. The cold gun disassembled and reassembled itself around her boot, shooting as she kicked out with it. The flash of bright blue light caused the person holding her to drop her, letting her land on her feet. Key put space between herself and her potential enemies, floating their weapons around her. She iced off her enemies into the room with a thick wall of ice, the parts for all their weapons slowly floating to the ground besides her feet. She was merciful, leaving enough room at the top for them to have air. She panted heavily, taking the cold gun off her boot and re-attaching it to her arm.

“See? Unfair!” Trickster whined to his team. She counted them: Captain Cold, Heatwave (his costume and overall physique confirming him for the one that had held her still), and Mirror Master (how they must’ve gotten in behind her). “She just takes toys and pulls them apart-”

“Trickster? Shut up,” Captain Cold barked. He crossed his arms, tilting his head. She could feel his stare from behind those goggles of his. The air was charged between them, his squat and broad stature towering over her from the other side of the icy barrier she had put up. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the Key,” she replied, her voice quivering somewhat from exertion and just the feeling of being in a room with four confirmed supervillains. “I didn’t take the money from the vaults.”

“Then why’re you here?” Cold drawled, crossing his arms. “And why take our weapons?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Hell no.”

“Bingo. I don’t trust you, fully armed. Not after having quick cement silly string and heat-seeking  _ screws _ thrown at me. Hell, the bad attempts at puns were probably the most hurtful,” she replied, crossing her arms. Mirroring his body language, best as she could. Trying not to geek out about the fact that Captain Cold stood in front of her. Play it cool, Theo, it was time to be keyed down, not up. “Standards are probably not something that comes to someone who wears that many conflicting patterns in their life though, so I don’t know why I expected better.”

“Didn’t answer my first question.”

“I’m hunting down whoever took the money. Simple as that. I’m hoping to  _ return _ the money, get whoever did it tossed in jail, and then go home and watch some hockey. I’m probably missing my boys and if I find out that I missed the Central City Combines kicking the ass of the Gotham City Giants because of this, I’m kicking your asses  _ first _ .” She paused. “I probably should anyway so I can put you into jail. Since I’m a hero and that’s what I’m supposed to do with supervillains-”

“Wrong classification, baby hero,” Cold replied. “Supervillain implies we wanna take over the world. We don’t. We’re professional criminals, blue collar ones at that.”

“Okay, sure we can turn your bad guy status down from a 10 to a 6, still doesn’t get you out of jail.” Key shrugged.

The two stared each other down, Cold making subtle changes to his posture and the Key copying them. Heatwave broke the silence.

“So, can I start the death threats about taking my flamethrower away from me?” he asked, “Because I wanna skin you alive and make you choke on your own skin-”

“See, that is helping a lot with the whole ‘oh we’re not so bad, we just are making money our way’ thing,” Key replied, snorting.

Heatwave punched the ice wall and growled. It took everything in the Key to not stumble backwards. She stood her ground, meeting Heatwave’s glare with her own stare. Her attention went back to Captain Cold when he cleared his throat.

“Look, kid,” he replied, “you’ve got some options. Leave us here, let Flash find us tomorrow morning, we tell him there’s a new pint-sized hero in town, you two can have a hero team-up and leave us out of it. We’ll just take your drive here and everything on it as payment for what you did to our guns.”

He paused, watching her. Her foot shuffled against the floor before she could stop it. She could see the start of a smirk, but he stopped himself.

“Or, you can let us out, we can give you your drive, you put our guns back together, and you team up with  _ us _ to bring in the mystery perp.”

“How the hell do you expect me to trust you not to turn on me first chance you get?”

Cold started to laugh. “You’re new to Central, aren’t you? We’ve teamed up with Flash plenty, chip in whenever there’s a big crisis. I’m a man of my word and Rogues have a code. It’s lengthy, so I won’t give you all the particulars, but it’s why Flash is determined to make sure we get fair treatment at Iron Heights and Belle Reve. If Flash can trust us, surely you can, right?”

She bit her lip, knowing he wouldn’t be able to see it. On one hand, being around the Flash is the last thing she wanted. She couldn’t afford to lose her data drive either. It had data for this case and several others, along with personal information. It’d been sloppy to trap them in there with it and she was gonna kick herself when this was all over.

“...okay. Okay, sure. I’ll have my first team up with criminals. I’m sure the Batman works with the Joker all the time, this’ll be fine,” she replied. Cold smirked, which didn’t make her feel any better about the situation. She took a deep breath, pulling the parts to the flamethrower together and attaching it to her gauntlet. She slowly melted the ice, letting the water pool as she floated the parts of their weapons above the water. 

The Key stepped forward, tapping Cold in the chest. “Sidestep for me a moment, need to make sure-”

Heatwave suddenly stepped forward, picking her up by the neck and squeezing. “I’m gonna-”

“Mick!” Cold barked. “Put ‘er down.”

“What?”

“Put the kid down, they’ve got my cold gun pointed at your chest. Panicking the kid with the guns and powers ain’t gonna help anyone. Put ‘em down.”

The Key’s hands shook as she pointed her left wrist at Heatwave’s chest, certain that he’d wear a suit made for fire, but maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t do as well against cold. She grit her teeth together, not giving this asshole the satisfaction of hearing her struggle to breathe.

Heatwave snorted, dropping her. She inhaled sharply, landing on her knees. The Key pointed the cold gun and fired.

She fired and fired, silent as a winter night.

The Key got up when she was done, breathing steady. She re-assembled the cold gun back into its original form, holding it out to Captain Cold. “He gets his flamethrower last,” she rasped. “I just wanted to freeze the water to make sure it didn’t fry to servers.”

“He’s twitchy, kid, helps him survive in this business,” Cold replied, putting a hand on Heatwave’s shoulder. Probably to make sure the hothead didn’t make a move again. He used his other hand to take his signature gun back from the Key, making sure it clicked into its holster. “Could learn a thing or two from ‘im.”

“No thanks,” she replied. “I’d rather stay cool under pressure.”

Captain Cold barked a laugh, slapping her on the back. She blinked at the touch, confused about the possible show of friendliness. Then she realized what she said and groaned, putting her gloves to her helmet in the universal sign of a facepalm.


	2. In Which Theo Tries to be Keyed Down

They were taking her to what Cold referred to as “their least favorite safe house”. Trickster was trying for small talk during the walk through the Mirror World over.

The Mirror World, as far as she could see considering looking at the wrong spot in the Mirror World hurt like hell, went on as far as the eye could see. Or couldn’t see. It was hard to tell, considering the whole place between reflections from other mirrors was a blank, white space of nothing that hurt to look at. Looking at where the real world was reflected was fine and dandy, but the minute you looked elsewhere it was like staring into the sun. The only reason she knew there were places to stand between reflections was because Mirror Master gave good directions on where to stand. Didn’t stop her from falling a few times, or Heatwave from sometimes almost taking a step into the infinite white void, but it probably helped more than having no expert to guide them at all.

“So, how old are you?” Trickster had asked in the mirror version of the bank.

“Hero work doesn’t pay that well, we’ve run the numbers,” he’d stated in a mirror version of what looked like a standard office building.

“Is there a course in being a baby hero on puns? Can you sneak me in?” he’d ask as he’d catch her after she fell off of an ice bridge Cold created.

“I’ve got non-poisonous M&M’s if you’re hungry-”

The Key finally broke. Why did Trickster care if she was hungry? Why was he being so friendly? Why were any of them as friendly as they had been (aside from Heatwave’s almost strangling her – she was still kind of mad about that, but what the shit was the social rule for that situation?  _ “Hey I just met you and you almost killed me, so fuck off maybe?” _ )? The two of them were in what she was quickly starting to refer to mentally as a thermal sandwich: Heatwave walked behind them and watched like a hawk, Captain Cold was in front of them and helping Mirror Master get them from Mirror World chunk to Mirror World chunk with bridges from his cold gun. 

She slowly (she’d been keeping her movements beyond walking slow and deliberate, so Heatwave wouldn’t attack her again) put a hand on Trickster’s shoulder. “Trickster- can I call you Tricks?”

“Sure, baby Flash does that, don’t see why you can’t.”

“Baby Flash- Kid Flash?”

“Yeah! He’s the baby Flash, since he’s so much younger than the Flash. Well...nah, he’s like...wait, why do  _ I  _ call him a baby, he’s a year  _ older _ than me!” Trickster looked over his shoulder at Heatwave. “Wait...does everyone call me the baby Rogue behind my back? Be real with me, Heat Miser.”

“That’s someone else’s title,” Heatwave grunted.

“Oh right! Pipes is younger than me! Ha!” Trickster clapped, a grin stretching across his lips. The Key was having a hard time imagining him robbing anyone with the way he carried on. “Take that, Richie Rich.”

“Anyway, Tricks, are you in the habit of chatting this much at all times?” the Key asked, giving his shoulder a light shake to get his attention back on the conversation.

“Yes,” answered every Rogue within earshot. Trickster was the sole person who answered that with a tone that wasn’t deadpan, but he looked delighted about that fact.

“Okay. Just wanted to see if this was personalized torture after the gun thing,” the Key replied. “Why the hell should I tell you how old I am, anyway?”

“Oh, that was me just wondering. You’re so small-”

“Not everyone can be a beanpole. I’m a very respectable height of five foot three-”

“I also wanted to know because I wanted to rib Heatwave if he almost broke one of the Rogue Rules!” Trickster lowered his volume, leaning closer to conspiratorially whisper to the Key, “Killing kids is a huge no-no and you sound younger than me, even with the voice gobblygook you’ve got going and I’m only 20, so...it’s also a no-no to kill heroes, so it’d be a huge thing to rib him about, y’know?”

The Key looked over her shoulder at Heatwave, humming softly. She could see him raise an eyebrow, the fabric of his cowl moving up ever so slightly in the right place. 

It was tempting. It was incredibly tempting. He  _ did _ almost kill her and this sounded like a really tame revenge plan she could go with. But...let’s not poke the angry bull with a stick.

She muttered, turning back to Trickster, “Nah. Sure, I guess I qualify as a kid in that definition, but he doesn’t need to be ribbed about it. Cold gave him enough crap about it with a look, y’know? Hell, if him almost killing me over this zany partnership becomes a running thing, just make a jar. Every time Heatwave almost melts the Key, Heatwave puts in a quarter.” She put on a serious tone. “You can be in charge of policing the jar, Tricks.”

“Yes!”

“ _ If _ it becomes a thing.” She looked back over her shoulder at Heatwave again. “We can be civil, can’t we, Heatwave?” Key drawled, keeping her voice acerbically sweet.

“No pulling apart my baby again,” he replied, “and sure.”

She blinked. Well, he  _ sounded _ honest at least...

“See?” She pulled her hand off Trickster’s shoulder. “We’re fine.”

“You could say you’re-”

She went to put a hand over Trickster’s mouth, but he caught her before she could. He got really close to the pane of her helmet and said quietly, “Cool.”

“I hate you so much right now,” she muttered, pushing him out of her personal space bubble.

“Should’ve made sure I didn’t know you dislike puns because now I’m gonna deal out some  _ punishment _ for what you did to my toys,” Trickster replied. Oh. So that’s what he thought her little kicking herself “dance” was. Kicking herself for making a pun over kicking herself for indulging in cold puns and possibly giving hints to Theo while in the Key persona. She was gonna let that assumption slide. “Do you know how long it takes me to get those parts? College labs do not leave  _ that _ much fun stuff out in the open and you didn’t even fully put everything back right.”

The Key snorted. “Well excuse me for not having your kind of intellect to  _ know _ how all that experimental prank tech of yours goes together.”

He paused. Trickster tilted his head at her and for the first time, she was close enough and in good enough light to see his eye color. Hazel. “Then how’d you know how to put Captain Cold’s and Mirror Master’s guns back together?”

She snorted, drawling, “I can’t give away  _ all _ my trade secrets, can I? Especially a hero to a criminal, tsk tsk. Flash, either baby or adult variant, doesn’t tell you everything they’re capable of, do they?”

“I mean...baby Flash and me talked a lot, during high school. He uh...stood up for me a lot, when I got...bad.” He seemed to deflate slightly. “So uh...when baby Flash was around and y’know. In Central. We’d talk. He’d complain about not being up to Flash’s speed, about how he felt...weak and dumb. I could sympathize.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, having to outlet her nervousness at stepping in  _ that _ particular emotional land mine somewhere and hey, better somewhere nobody could see it. “I’m...I’m sorry. I’d heard he had retired at some point, but I’m not in the hero loop yet, so I dunno what’s up, but I’m sure he’s okay.”

They were quiet for about five seconds. He looked put out. He had a sincere looking expression of sorrow and worry, so the Key let him have a moment to pull himself together. She looked up at Cold, who she could spot casting a look over his shoulder. Their gazes met for another five seconds before Cold turned his eyes back in front of him. She was appreciative of the silence, able to put herself back together for a moment...before Trickster started laughing. Cackling, really.

“Can’t believe you bought the sob story, Jingles! C’mon, I’m a criminal, you think I’m gonna tell you the truth?”

“...I’m going to focus on the fact that you just called me  _ Jingles _ rather than fall for mind games right now about what’s truth out of your mouth and what’s a lie,” Key answered, not giving him the satisfaction of looking at him. “Captain, how much farther?”

“Relax, he’ll be off you once we all reach our least favorite safe house,” Cold replied. “Though, Trickster, you take your meds today?”

“...yesterday.”

Cold sighed. “Mirror Master, can you poke your apprentice to snab Trickster’s meds from a safe house? We’re not here often enough to have a stash here.”

“Sure, though he’s grown out of his Mirror Apprentice phase. I think he’s lookin’ at Mirror somethin’ else now that he’s not a teenager,” Mirror Master replied. “I already ruled out Mirror Fucker as his new alias. He’s gonna be the Mirror Master someday, I don’t need my legacy attached to a Mirror Fucker-”

“Dunno why you took on a runt, can’t see much of a point,” Cold replied.

Mirror Master shrugged, pausing the walk to take a moment to look around. Key didn’t know how the coltish man could navigate this place. She couldn’t even see ground beneath her feet, at points of it, because the stretches between reflections had no shadows or anything to make stable ground distinct from a hole into nothingness. But Mirror Master could figure out where there were places to stand, knew how to direct Cold to shoot to bridge the spaces. Maybe it was the thick, black goggles that let him see, maybe it was experience, but whatever it was it gave Mirror Master a huge advantage in the Mirror World.

“Maybe it’s my way of finding a mirror for myself,” Mirror Master answered, “maybe I just liked the idea of having a kid around to piss you off, Cold. Didn’t know you were gonna pick up the other kids to give my kid friends.”

Cold snorted. “They pull their weight, though I ain’t a mentor like you are. Just their boss. Our new friend, the Key here, is gonna pull their weight just like all the others.”

“I’m not doing anything more illegal than vigilantism, B&E, and giving cops a hard time,” the Key joked, holding her hands up. “No theft, no blue collar crime, none of that.”

“Of course.” Cold smirked at her over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t expect otherwise, baby hero.”

“Hey, I’m fourteen, I’m not a baby-”

Trickster suddenly picked her up, his stupidly long arms able to cradle her almost –  _ almost _ – like a baby. “You are a tiny baby, frickin’- Cap, did you know they were fourteen?”

“No idea,” Cold drawled as Key wiggled in Trickster’s hold. “Glad I made you hold back, Mick?”

Heatwave snorted. “Yeah, yeah, thank you, boss, for making sure I didn’t kill a kid. I’ll kiss your ass about it later.”

The Key fell silent as the Rogues fell into easy banter around her. It was oddly domestic: arguing over who was going to cover the costs of take-out, that sort of thing. She had tuned them out before they settled between Chinese and Thai. She got out of Trickster’s hold once, but then he swept her back up again so she just gave up. This way, at least, she wouldn’t fall off ice bridges, since everyone here was supernaturally used to working around each other’s tech. 

She closed her eyes briefly, letting herself sense the tech with her magic again. All of Trickster’s tech was new, barely had much  _ umph  _ to sense, but was more technical and experimental than anything else. There was an unsurprising, faint cackle from the tech, no doubt a faint echo of Trickster’s emotions as he was putting together the screws, the silly string can, and all the other high tech prank gear he had stored away in his coat. His shoes gave her something, but it was too...Frankensteinian for her to glean much off of from the brief touch.

It was the other three’s gear that spoke to her. Heatwave’s flamethrower gave her indications of a gentle touch, soothing bullet injuries after a nasty confrontation, of reverence. The trigger system in particular gave her a whisper of a passionate, doting figure who loved everything the flamethrower could dish out.

Mirror Master’s gun sat unused at his right hip, less used to the warmth of a hand than Heatwave’s flamethrower, but the parts sang a tune of love and care, of meticulous examination (taking it apart, putting it back together again, those were strong imprints in the mirror gun. It was the only reason she was able to put it back together again with so many parts that she didn’t even know the names for). There was a part, under the gun’s casing, that gave her the impression of escapism, of laughing freedom (belly laughter, a sprawled out field, a man dressed in white), which didn’t surprise her. What did surprise her was what she felt from Captain Cold’s gun.

Under the white leather grip, there was something etched into metal: an X, the lines strong and defiant and confidently etched like it’d stand the tests of time. There was no way that Cold had had this gun in particular as long as Heatwave’s flamethrower and Mirror Master’s mirror gun, but her magic still picked up a sense of history. Reinvention, curses in a dark room, being clinked against a cold coffee mug, knowing the feeling of many homes, many hands. There’s something about it that makes her homesick for something she doesn’t quite know how to identify, but this wasn’t the first instance of her life that she’d felt that feeling. She felt it every time she saw a father playing catch with his kid, every time Mother’s and Father’s Day rolled around, and on her birthday. There was something about that feeling that had  _ told _ her how to put it back together.

Trickster’s whisper-shouting brought her back to her body. “Guys, guys, I think they-”

“I’m not asleep,” she replied, popping open her eyes and looking around. Seemed like they were getting to the last stretch, if the large spike of color painted somewhere in front, about 20 feet, of them said anything. “My powers just sometimes cause me to space out.”

“Involuntarily?” Cold asked. “Hell of a thing if you’re working alone.”

“Some of us don’t have the luxury of teammates, I’ll have to deal,” she answered, frowning under her helmet. “And it’s not...completely involuntary. Sometimes I like flexing a little bit. Didn’t take anything apart, just...wanted to see if things felt different in Mirror Master’s playhouse.” Wasn’t a complete lie.

Cold huffed. “If we were any other villain-”

“You weren’t and you didn’t toss me.” Key let a sardonic, yet amused tone in her voice. “See? Our partnership is going off to a  _ great _ start.”

She squawked as Cold scooped her up from Trickster, Trickster making elongated “ooooooooooooooo” noises at her with a conspiratorial grin.

Trickster whispered as Cold flopped her over his left shoulder, “You’re in  _ troooooubblllllle _ .” 

She stuck her tongue out in her helmet, then remembered he couldn’t see it. She made a very audible huff to try to make up the difference.

“Pipe down. Trickster, go on ahead and get your meds from the Handheld Mirror-”

“I don’t wanna.”

“Tough, you don’t take your meds and I’m gonna let the new baby-” he pat the Key’s back for emphasis “-be in charge of the punishment.”

Trickster gasped. “You wouldn’t-”

“Try me.”

There was a brief silence before Trickster clicked his heels together. He stepped into the air, sprinting ahead of them like a Looney Tune character  _ zooming _ through the air. It wasn’t superspeed, just...very desperate  _ scrambling _ .

The Key snorted, trying to bite back laughter. “Were you serious?”

“As a blizzard,” Cold drawled. “You up for walking or are you gonna space out on us again?”

“Think I’ll be okay. It’s by the docks, right? Not a lot of data servers by the docks, so less stuff to, um...talk to? Best way I can put it.” She sighed, stretching as he set her down. She put a hand to her helmet in a facepalm, groaning. “I shouldn’t be talking about the particulars of my powers so much. Not with you-”

“Kid, from the way you keep leaking, sounds like you don’t get to do much talking at all about ‘em,” Cold replied. “You have any friends?”

“Sure, I’ll hand you the pathetic sob story: any friends I had either have been quietly vanished or they weren’t really friends to begin with,” she replied, “and that was  _ before _ the powers set in.”

Cold asked, “No mentor to talk this out with?”

“I’ve got a mentor, he just...he likes decisive answers and I don’t have anything solid when it comes to my powers. It’s...hard to describe, so I talk in circles sometimes when talking about it and he doesn’t like that. Shuts me down a bunch when I try to talk out my thoughts.”

“How’d you get ‘em? The powers?” Mirror Master asked. “Metahuman?”

“Actually, I’m  _ magic _ .” The Key did the appropriate jazz hands upon her announcement. “The name’s literal: I’m the key to every technology on Earth that’s been invented since about...I think they lost touch around Middle Ages?” She shrugged, walking alongside him. “Evil immortal sorcerers weren’t too keen on catching up with human electronics and technology, so they got me involved in a ritual. Ritual didn’t turn out the way they hoped, now I’m here. Not all the details, but consider it a sort of...hey, I trust you about two feet on the trust scale sign. Two out of...fifty.”

Cold snorted. “Four percent.”

“My way was cooler.”

Cold snickered. “I think I’m the authority of cool here, smalls, and  _ that _ ? That wasn’t cool. That was you trying to sound smarter by mixing up numbers.”

“Trust ‘im on that, Key,” Heatwave replied, “that’s the man who mastered absolute zero from convenience store goodies.”

The Key stopped walking and Heatwave bumped into her. She sputtered, “W-wait, I wasn’t hallucinating when I sensed a-”

“No revealing my secrets, kid!” Cold spun around, sweeping her up again and flopping her on top of his other shoulder. He pat her back, laughing when she smacked his back. “Same goes for you, Heatwave.”

Heatwave hummed his agreement, his look turning sharp and causing her to stop squirming from the intensity of it.

“5,000 pennies for your thoughts?” She almost kicked herself for the squeak in her voice.

“Fifty bucks ain’t gonna buy you a sentence of my thoughts,” Heatwave laughed. “You were out of it when we were talking food. What’s your vote, kid? Chinese or Thai?”

The Key couldn’t stop a grin from popping out of her voice. “I haven’t had any good Thai food in  _ forever _ !”

“Thai firmly confirmed for food of the night then,” Cold drawled.

She found herself frowning in confusion again. Why did she get a vote for what they were having for dinner that night? Why treat her like a roommate or a...a family member?

* * *

 

She couldn’t believe she set up a proximity alarm spell just so she could eat, coughing out the rusty Ancient Greek under her breath, but she did. The helmet didn’t leave a lot in the way of being able to eat and she was starving. She didn’t want to leave because then, she could assume that the Rogues would assume that she was telling the police on them and that’d be a no-go. They didn’t seem to think it was strange for her to take her food and find a secluded corner of the warehouse, they seemed to want to make some calls of their own anyway.

She took off her helmet, setting it aside briefly and running her hand through her hair. “Great idea, team up with known criminals. That’ll go over well with people in the future, Winters included.” She sighed, muttering to herself. She swapped her voice into a bad imitation of Winters, her voice going comically deep with the worst British accent she could muster, “My apprentice, I cannot believe you debased yourself by working with those...those  _ sinners _ . You’re so much better than that.” She rubbed her temple with one hand, stuffing her face with the other. 

She muttered after swallowing, “I’ve gotta get over this stupid fear of the Flash. The Flash is a good guy and not a killer...but he also hasn’t gotten me great fucking Thai food today, so whatever. We’re already in the situation, Key, roll with it.” She took a deep breath, popping some of her chow mein into her mouth and imagined she was chewing her nerves into tinier pieces to swallow. “You’ll get through this, you’re a survivor.”

She sat, eating while somewhere between being the Key and being Theo Soliani. It had been Theo’s fear that had gotten her into this situation, so the Key would have to survive it for the both of them. And the Key always did get out of every lion’s den she walked into. It’d be fine.

She sat up straighter when she was about halfway done with her bowl, hearing a voice. It wasn’t nearby, but it was closer than the Rogues’ squabble she had been hearing from the actual safehouse. Someone was in the warehouse and talking to someone. Theo put on her helmet and the Key tapped the invisibility charm. She followed the voice, slowly creeping to make sure her footsteps weren’t audible.

The Key found Heatwave sitting on a crate with his cowl off and his back turned to her, his bald head exposed to the slightly smelly air of the warehouse. He was on the phone, chatting with someone.

“You should’ve seen ‘im, Allen. We’ve been worried since the Belle Reve thing, what with what baby Flash told us about  _ that _ job, but it’s the closest I’ve seen him back to normal Snart than I’ve seen in months. I think this is doing him good, chasing down whoever made us look like idiots,” Heatwave replied. He paused, letting this Allen reply. “Yeah, I think this means we won’t have to stage fights anymore. He would’ve caught onto us eventually and that piss show wouldn’t’ve been good for anybody, especially him. Oh, by the way, we’ve got ourselves a baby hero with us. I think that’s helpin’ too.”

Key didn’t need to tap into his phone to hear the person exclaim a very loud question of “WHAT?” She couldn’t tap into phones without causing an audible sound anyway, so she was left with whatever her ears could hear.

“Yeah, the squirt was poking into the bank while we were keeping an eye on it. Says they wanna hunt down whoever took the money and return it. Didn’t say where. Does things with tech, took apart our gear without even touching it. Should’ve seen Snart’s face when the kid used his gun to make a big ice wall to wall us off, it was priceless.” He sighed. “I know, but Snart offered the kid to either work with us or the Flash. Didn’t flinch when I was pulling the normal scary Heatwave act, but sure as hell flinched when the Flash was so much as  _ mentioned _ . Snart’s probably gonna give you shit about that, when this is over. Just like you’re gonna give me shit for almost choking the kid out.”

Heatwave went silent for a while, listening to the other side of the phone. He sighed a lot, leaning back on the crate. The Key settled into a sitting position, figuring it was now less rude of her to eavesdrop since they were talking about her now.

“Look, I know I should’ve been calmer, Snart gave me the normal lecture on my anger issues when the baby hero slipped off to eat...yeah, they didn’t eat with us, have a helmet, so they didn’t wanna show off their secret identity or whatever. We’re respecting that, trying to keep the kid comfortable since I think Snart’s got ‘em marked up as a potential recruit. Kid’s messed up enough without us making it worse than I have, had some line about not having friends and how their mentor’s an ass...no, they didn’t  _ say _ he was an ass, just my opinion after what I heard. You ever hear of any baby hero going by the Key?” Heatwave paused long enough to have the other person say no, or at least Key assumed they said no. 

This was her first big case that would have to be noticed. Anything else she did before this case, she could lurk off and not take credit. But Winters said that heroes, good ones, hand in the bad guys to the police personally. She tried not to get nauseous, thinking about that. Her, handing someone in to the pigs...but that’s what Winters said she had to do to be a good hero. Work with the pigs. And since he was her mentor and he was way more experienced than her, she’d follow his lead...for now.

Heatwave’s voice broke her out of her thoughts. “Think you should clean up your house, see if you can shake out anything and if you find out this Key’s mentor...yeah, yeah...I’d keep off with the invites with the kid for now, at least ones directly from you. And hey, this kid might be the missing link for the project you keep harping on with Snart, the one he keeps shutting down? God knows I’d like to hop on that project, but I ain’t going without Snart. ‘Sides, I know the pay’s gonna be shit, so you let me pull what I can on my side and you see if you can figure out the pay problem.” He paused, then burst into laughter. “Hey, we all got into this because we hate the system and love money, so day jobs aren’t going to be an option.” He grumbled, “Yeah, yeah, Allen, I’ll keep the kid safe. I already know Snart’s gonna, you know how he is about kids. Go clean up house, Allen, I’ll keep an eye on everyone...yeah, yeah, I’ll keep safe.” 

He hung up, sliding the phone under his armpit and picking up his plate of garlic trout. He went back inside the safehouse and she was left with too much data to process right now. She snuck back to her secluded corner, taking off her helmet and invisibility and starting to type down everything she’d heard so she could sort it out when the case was done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some character ages of characters that have appeared thus far, just to keep the record straight on stuff.
> 
> Theo/Key: 14  
> Trickster: 18 (implied by him saying he's a year younger than Kid Flash. YJ puts Wally around 19 at this point in the timeline)  
> Captain Cold: 39  
> Heatwave: 42  
> Mirror Master: 39
> 
> Thank you to those who have been reading and leaving kudos and/or comments! Y'all are great.


	3. In Which Theo Pushes

When she slipped into the safehouse with an empty foam box, the last skeleton of her meal, other Rogues had arrived. Weather Wizard was garbed in green and yellow, leaning against a couch’s arm with his coat tails swept out behind him over the arm of the couch. Mirror Master had a mini-me, sitting on said couch, arms crossed and looking particularly grouchy with Trickster laying across his lap like a very smug cat. Looking very prim and proper was Pied Piper, sitting on a stool, looking like a human pretzel bent in ways that the Key didn’t think possible and somehow _balancing_ on the stool, and tampering with a flute on his lap. He kept having to push his cape out of the way and adjust his green hood.

“Does that flute have a broadcast system built into it?” the Key asked, lowering herself into her normal pretzel position on the floor.

The Pied Piper’s glowing green eyes (nothing electronic. Special contacts maybe?) flicked up at her from the flute. “Yes-”

“The wireless system’s slightly messed up, probably from sudden travel,” she replied, “you might want to build a case for it, inside the flute, so you can secure the wiring better. That way, you won’t lose connection mid-fight.”

There was an awkward silence and the Key became very aware of the fact that they were all looking at her. Cold from the kitchenette, Heatwave from his perch on the counter, Mirror Master from the large mirror sitting next to the TV – everyone. She cleared her throat. “I’d offer to fix it myself but um...I figured um...personal space. And letting you know about it seemed to be in the five second rule, so I figured it was like cleaning spinach from your teeth.”

“Uh...thanks. I guess.” He gently opened the flute by twisting its head, pulling out the mess of wires that had caught the Key’s attention. He didn’t sound that old, by his voice, but that might’ve been a purposeful decision on his part like hers with her voice modulator.

“So, what’s your deal, Key?” Weather Wizard asked, twirling his wand around his fingers. “Fourteen year old hero, playing nice with the Rogues?” He stared up at Captain Cold, as if blaming him for all this, then drawled, “This wasn’t something I thought I’d be dealing with when I woke up this morning with a hangover.”

“I was looking into what happened with the bank heist and your team picked me up as I was grabbing security data,” she replied, “due to my powers, I can analyze the data quickly and figure out what happened.”

“And what happens when we find the person who did it?” Weather Wizard asked, moving a strand of his brown hair out of his face. “You gonna let us rough ‘em up?”

“I mean. We probably will have to,” she answered. “I don’t think they’ll be happy to see anyone in this room-”

“And the cash? Your hero shit gonna get in the way of us getting cash-”

“Wizard,” Cold drawled, “calm that temper storm of yours before your wand ruins another safe house.”

Weather Wizard _kissed_ his wand, running his hand through a baby storm cloud that had been forming over his head, snapping, “They can pull it apart like everything else-”

She cut in, “I actually can’t!” The Key flinched, her head going between her shoulders like a turtle into her shell, as Weather Wizard turned his very intense brown eyes back on her in a glare. She sputtered, “I um...my magic doesn’t sense your wand like it does everything else. It’s...weird.”

Weather Wizard smirked. “Good. That means we stand a chance against you when you try to turn us in-”

“ _Enough_ , Wizard,” Cold snapped. “Kid has two phones strapped to them. Could’ve called cops during the forty-three minutes it took them to eat. They didn’t because if they did, cops would’ve been here by now because it only takes them twenty-six minutes to get from the closest police office to this area. So stuff it and save it for _if_ they throw us to the pigs.”

She felt confusion sweep over her for what felt like the millionth time that day. Why was Captain Cold, infamous nemesis of the Flash, standing up for her? It was surreal, both because of who was doing it and because she wasn’t used to people standing up for her, personally, at all. Then she remembered what Heatwave said, on the phone. _“I think Snart’s got ‘em marked up as a potential recruit.”_ That made sense: he didn’t want Weather Wizard scaring her off, if that was the case. She relaxed.

Weather Wizard had a consistent glare up, glaring at the Key and Cold. She held up her left wrist, waving slowly and cheekily. She used her magic to fill the phone’s screen on her wrist with an emoji with a tongue sticking out lighting up the whole screen. Weather Wizard growled, but was drowned out by Trickster’s laughter.

“Been some time since you threw numbers like that at any of us,” Mirror Master replied, a soft fondness in his voice.

“Yeah, what about it?” Cold asked, walking over to the circle and sitting in the obviously rescued (torn at places, restitched with care, the mechanism inside sighing in relief from repairs when it was picked up off the street) recliner. He motioned Key to scoot over closer to him and she did, sitting on the floor and leaning her back against the side of the recliner.

Mirror Master chuckled as he walked over to the couch, lifting Trickster’s legs so he could sit on the couch with his apprentice without sitting on Trickster. “No fight about it, just missed it.”

Cold tilted his head, staring at Mirror Master. “Used to call me a control freak-”

“Okay!” Key replied, holding her hands up in the air. “Much as I love the domesticity of all this, we’ve got someone to track before divorce papers get tossed around. _I_ am going to go through the security footage. Twice. In this time, I’ll be kind of like...like I’m sleeping? Very, very deeply sleeping? So um...no doing weird things to my body. I would appreciate waking up and not having been a doodle board in my sleep. And y’know – no peeking under the helmet, please. I went through all this effort with this costume to _have_ a secret identity, y’know?”

“Trust is a two-way street, kid,” Cold answered, “if we can trust you not to do that to us – close your mouth, Compact Mirror, I don’t care if our names and mugshots are on our arrest records, it’s the principle of the matter _and_ Pipes has never been arrested – we won’t do that to you.”

The Key snorted. “You know, call me a goody two-shoes, but I hadn’t even considered looking under masks and goggles and helmets and hoods. Honest. I hadn’t actually...thought that far ahead. At all.” She laughed under her breath. “Oh my God, I’m so bad at this-”

“Kid-” Captain Cold paused, pursing his cracked, dry lips together in a flat line. “ _Key_. Do your thing. Nobody’s gonna do anything.” He pat her helmet. “Sooner we get this done, sooner you can figure yourself out.”

Weather Wizard snorted, grumbling as he fiddled with his wand, “Sooner she-”

“They!” Trickster snapped, sounding the closest to angry the Key had ever heard him. “We don’t know gender, _they_!”

Weather Wizard opened his mouth, but the look Cold sent him froze him. He sighed, “Fine, _they_ can try to arrest us.”

She popped the drive out of one of the compartments on her back, holding it in her hand. “Oh, and if I look like I’m having a seizure, shake me awake because that means my brain’s overloading on data,” she chirped.

Cold barked, “WHAT-” but Key was already tapping into the drive’s data. Everything around her – the mustard yellow wallpaper, the cheap manilla tiles of the kitchenette, the scratchy-looking khaki carpet, the sturdy arm of Captain Cold’s navy blue recliner at her back, the faint light from the cheap lamps about the room, the hum of portable generators, the Rogues’ voices (Cold snapping about something or another, someone else snarking, Trickster cackling) – all of those details flushed clean from her perspective. She is lost to the hum and buzz of the data, lights and pixels swirling in her mind as her hand gripped the drive. The Key navigates the data (visual, textual, she sees all that the security system could see, _feel_ all of it) as anyone would: with a mental keyboard and an interface.

/inspect  
3:00 AM Vault intact, money present in metallic coffers, motion sensors laying dormant.

/inspect (fastforward)  
4:45 AM Vault intact, money present in metallic coffers, motion sensors laying dormant.

/inspect (fastforward:2)  
6:32 AM Vault intact, money present in metallic coffers, motion sensors laying dormant.

/inspect (fastforward:2.5)  
7:18 AM, Vault intact.

/inspect (fastforward:2.8)  
8:14 AM, Vault intact.

/inspect (fastforward:free)  
9 AM, 10 AM, 11 AM Vault intact. Wisps of boredom on security camera, feedback from who was on camera monitoring duty. /clear (target:empath_data)

/inspect (fastfoward:anomaly)  
12 PM Vault intact, ERROR. ERROR unknown data present in Vault computer.

/inspect_ghost (target:computer, ERROR)  
Grit teeth, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Cramped space, not enough space. Warm body taking up most of the space, ghosting through data, but not through the Key. Hair tickles her nose, the person’s hair coiled in sharp corkscrews- no _springs_ , textured and well maintained. Smells of lavender. Lack of magic’s pyre, something _else_ , something _other_. The body is red and black, diamonds and diamonds and diamonds and diamonds overlapping each other.

/inspect (fastforward:0.05)  
The person is out, the motion sensors are tripped, screaming, screaming, screaming. The person is 5 feet and 8 inches tall, built like an athlete. There’s motion, motion, motion- /clear (target:motion_data) The person wears a black costume, padding in the shoulders, no sleeves, mainly black, but there’s yellow lines and a black diamond-shaped button at their throat. Looks DFAB. Hair is up in two buns, glasses over their brown eyes. Tattoo work on their right cheek, two red diamonds. Pause is freezing them into a selfie pose in the vault. Trail, highlighter yellow.

/inspect (fastfoward:0.05)  
Trail moves with the person as they’ve shifted in the room, putting the cash into a bag. Can be tracked! Shifting in the computer, she turns around in the system. The yellow highlighter trail continues off, through every bit of data. Theo grins, giggling. She reviews the data, going over every minute detail to make sure she misses nothing. Then...then she lets herself drift, pixels and data all leaving her head.

Exhaustion sets in. First, the sense of touch returned to her, the feel of her costume _dragging_ her down. Had it always been this heavy? Had to have been, computer bits there for processing, that took a lot of room in her backpack. Gravity tugged at her and she felt herself sink into something soft. She gasped for air, dragging her body up and reaching for where her helmet should be on herself. It was still there, hearing the clunk of her gloves hitting the helmet. Theo gurgled, trying to get a hand on speaking, but a hand touched her shoulder and made her lay back.

“Easy there.” Mirror Master’s voice, calm and stable. “You’ve been out for a while. We moved you to the cot in the back.”

“Trail!” she coughed. She knew after deep dives like that, she needed water, but she didn’t care. “Teleported...”

“It can wait a minute, Key,” Mirror Master replied. “How’re you feeling?”

She waited a moment, clearing her throat and slowing her breathing. She pushed down her confusion at his concern, his _care_ , and focused on the present. “Temporary blindness,” she slowly answered. “Data dives...do that to me.”

Mirror Master chuckled. “You’ve got more guts than me, kid. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t’ve done it around us.”

“Trust goes both ways,” the Key replied. “Rogues haven’t betrayed that trust yet. Don’t see a reason to stop, for the moment. How’s everyone else doing?”

“Most of ‘em left. You were out for three hours, it’s late,” he answered.

She raised an eyebrow, then mentally cursed realizing nobody could see it. The curse of being naturally expressive with one’s face while wearing a helmet. The Key put the skepticism in her voice, asking, “Why’d you stay?”

“I’m the closest thing we’ve got to a doctor. I’ve got three doctorates in mechanical engineering, physics, and computer engineering, so I’m not _that_ kind of doctor, but I know enough from patching everyone else up and from working with mirrors and illusions that I know what a seizure looks like. I’m also the person who could get you to the hospital the fastest if you _did_ start having a seizure.” He snorted loudly. “Thanks for giving the Captain a heart attack with that, by the way. Funniest sh- thing I’ve ever seen.” His voice turned squeaky. “I’m going to look into the data! By the way, I might have a seizure from this-”

She sputtered, “I said if it _looked_ like I was having a seizure- I don’t sound like that!”

“-then your brain was overloading from data, which might as well be a seizure in severity of things you could do to harm yourself.” Mirror Master sighed. “Try not to pull something like that again-”

“Why, do you guys suddenly get attached to a strange hero you’ve never met before-”

The Key heard him tap the front of her helmet, aggressively, so she paused. “Key, think about it. Young hero, no young _person_ found dead in the safe house of a group of known criminals. How does that look?”

She fidgeted with her gloves nervously. “Not good?”

“Very bad,” he replied. “We may have a very strict rule about killing and an even _stricter_ one about killing children, but who would believe us? Maybe, _maybe_ if we’re lucky Flash will believe us. But the rest of the hero world? Would be on the Rogues faster than a baby soaked in barbeque sauce and then tossed to the wolves. We’d be lucky to be in jail, if the heroes with the no kill policy got to us first. And even if we broke out of Iron Heights, we’d have too much heat on us all the time to even make a living and with our criminal records, who would hire us at normal jobs?” Mirror Master sighed, again. “That’s even if we get out of jail on good behavior, assuming we don’t get life sentences from supposedly killing you. Which we probably would.”

“I’ll...think it through, next time I pull something like that,” she replied. “I didn’t consider...I just wanted to contribute.”

“I know and you have, if the words you were gasping when you were waking up have anything to say about it,” he replied. “What’d you find in there?”

“The-”

“Wait, lemme get Cold, he’ll get grumpy if I hear about this before he does-”

“OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE, SEND THAT FUCK TO THE SIN BIN!” Cold roared from the other room.

The Key sat up again. “WHAT GAME IS THAT?” she shouted.

“COMBINES VERSUS GIANTS.” She could hear him whoop and clap his hands, and in that moment she was sure a blast from his gun would hurt less than the thought of not being able to see her _team_ in action.

She shrieked and used her hands to feel the edge of the cot. She pulled her legs to the edge of it, sliding them off. Hands touched her shoulders.

Mirror Master stammered, “Are you sure you should be walking-”

“MY BOYS NEED ME!” She leaned into his hands, more or less bullying him into supporting her weight.

He sighed, putting her arm around what felt like was his neck. “You can’t even see-”

“It’s coming back to me, help me up, my body’s betraying me, the treacherous bitch!” she barked, leaning into him. She wasn’t _completely_ lying. She was starting to see light, faint fuzzy shapes in the light. She moved, shakily with him as he slowly walked with her.

Mirror Master abruptly stopped helping her limp along, gasping, “Language!”

“I’ll watch my fucking language when hockey’s not on!” she replied. “Besides, you’re a criminal, what do you care about language?”

Mirror Master sighed deeply. She was getting the sense that he was under the impression that he got a lot of excuses to sigh, both shallowly and deeply. He brought her over, helping her sit on the couch. The one she’d seen earlier, the one that had Mirror Master’s mini me and Trickster on it if she had to guess. She leaned back, relaxing into the couch.

“What’s the score?” she asked, listening to the announcers chatter back and forth about Dominique McLean and how he rose to being the Central Combines’s star player.

“Five to three, Combines kickin’ ass,” Cold answered, somewhere off to her right. “How’re you doin’, kid?”

“Data dive’s got me all fogged up, but I’m getting light reception in the eyes back and my ears work, so that’s somethin’,” she replied. “Eventually color and detail will kick back in. Probably in the morning, after sleep.”

Cold snorted. “Mirror Master probably lectured you already, so I’ll keep it short. Don’t pull shit like that. S’not worth it.”

“I’m sorry.” She fidgeted, biting her lip. “After what Weather Wizard said-”

Cold barked out a laugh. “Ignore what he says, he’s all hot and cold air.”

She paused. She squinted her eyes, feeling a smirk curl up her lips. “Was that a _pun_?”

“Rogue rule number 32: pun as thy wilt,” Cold answered, his tone deadly serious.

“Bull-”

There was a cheer from the TV and they both fell silent. Then erupted into shouting, a long held tradition of watching sports on the television.

* * *

**Central City, MO** **  
** **August 15th, 2014**

Theo woke up with a crick in her neck. She groaned, opening her eyes. She was still in the Rogues’ least favorite safehouse, the yellow wallpaper greeting her. She sat up, shifting her helmet back the way it was supposed to be.

“Bathroom’s two doors down, if you want somewhere to take off that helmet.” She looked over and saw Heatwave in the kitchenette. She tilted her head, seeing him without his silvery heat suit and cowl. He wore a tank top and sweats, from what she could see.

“...how did you guys get a bathroom inside of a warehouse?” She asked, chuckling under her breath.

He looked up from the pan he was cooking in and smirked at her. “Well, for one thing, OSHA regs say that all places people work long periods of time get bathrooms. This warehouse’s been abandoned a while though, Mirror Master hasn’t poked at the shitty plumbing since this is a temporary deal. Stole a portapotty. Don’t put it on our records, not the specifics anyway. We’ve all got theft on there anyway. Took it from a police baseball game.”

She whistled, swatting her knee as she sat up properly. “Nice! Show those pigs what for.” She stretched, standing up.

“Didn’t think I’d ever hear a hero type call cops _pigs_ ,” Heatwave replied, a bit of skepticism in his voice.

“I am no fan of cops,” she replied, thinking back to every cop that had ever assaulted her and people she knew, remembering one in particular when she was grieving her dad that had shouted at a ten year old and called her crazy. “I have punched like...five.”

Heatwave stared at her for a moment, his brown eyes unreadable. He started cracking up, picking up a fork and pointing it at her. “Trickster’s right!” he laughed, flipping over bacon. “You are a lil baby! Update me when you reach double digits, kid.”

“Sure thing,” she laughed, leaning on the counter by the kitchenette and watching Heatwave cook. “So you guys what, leave the full portapotty for the pigs to find and swipe a clean one?”

“If no one screws up and gets put on potty duty, yeah,” he chuckled, eyes back on the bacon. “Trickster’s idea, the swapping porta potty thing. She thought it up in her first week with us. By the way, Trickster’s having a girl day today.” His shoulders tensed and he looked up at her, giving her a light glare. “That ain’t gonna be a problem, right?”

“Oh, is she genderfluid?” Theo asked. “Does that mean she’s doing she/her pronouns today?”

“Pretty much.” He relaxed his shoulders, the glare dissipating. “Glad you’re not the type to cause a fuss over that, Key. Had to get a spritz bottle for Weather Wizard to get him in line with it.”

“Who am I to judge how people live, if they aren’t hurting me or people in general?” she asked. “If it makes her happy, that’s great. Honest.”

“Good.” He grinned, exposing his teeth in a sharp, switchblade flick with his eyes lighting up with the small fire from the stove as he moved the pan off the stove. She gulped, quietly. Was he silently threatening her? Did he have a habit of leaving an open stove flame going? There were a lot of variables with this interaction that she didn’t know how to fully process.

“I’m um...going to head to the bathroom. If anyone’s looking for me,” she sputtered, standing up straight.

He hummed acknowledgement and she walked out. She found her way to an empty room with a porta potty in it and hopped into the small, blue space. Locking the door, she took off her helmet. Theo looked at the small mirror in the portapotty, take deep breaths and keeping eye contact with her reflection’s light green eyes.

“We’re okay,” she muttered, hooking the lip of her helmet on the hook for it on her belt so she wouldn’t have to put it down in a portapotty. “We’re okay. Key’s gonna get us out of this, all in one piece. Then we can get back to Winters and sock him in the face because when I signed up for heroism, I didn’t sign up for Social Interaction Olympics. Especially with people with social cues I have no idea what the fuck they mean. Am I overthinking? Underthinking?” She groaned, running her gloved hands through her hair. “This is why I didn’t go running to join a team. If I’m alone, I either win the day or the day breaks me. Truth tables, all the way down. Win or lose, binary table.” She snapped her head to the left, hearing a knocking somewhere outside the porta potty.

“You fall in, kid?” Heatwave asked.

She put on her helmet, getting out of the portapotty. “Nah,” she answered, falling into the Key’s lackadaisical nonchalance. “Girl just needs to freshen up now and then, y’know?”

“Sure, sure. Just checkin’ on ya,” he replied, watching her as she walked out of the bathroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm slightly hesitant about my iteration of Sam Scudder, but that's mostly because I wanted to heavily differentiate him from the other Rogues so I had to get more creative. The more I wrote him this way, the more he naturally came to me. For lack of a better way to describe my thought process, I have to refer to Freud (I'm groaning too, don't worry) to explain my Rogues Big Three. Sam's the superego, logic and sense and order. Mick's the id, emotion and instinct. Leonard's the ego, reconciling the two. When I put them into hypothetical situations, it makes them work solidly like a team since they balance each other out and bring neat stuff out of each other. Sam's also got the most different-to-his-comic-counterpart backstory, compared to Leonard and Mick, so it makes sense that he's gonna be different. Sorry, rambling at this point.
> 
> Same sort of thing happened with Axel. I can't remember when the headcanon of Axel being genderfluid came to me, but when it did it did *hard*. Might've been when I was figuring out Axel's wardrobe or when I was tinkering with backstory.
> 
> Weather Wizard is an asshole with reasons, I swear. I took some creative liberty with him and I like what equilibrium I've reached between Mark and Marco Mardon. I like Mark's technology, but not Marco's meta-powers (I'm not a fan of the core Rogues being metas in the slightest. It kind of defeats the narrative purpose of them, which is that they're normal guys who got their hands on tech and manage to give the Flash an honest threat), so I've been working hard to make a good balance between what I think worked well with Mark and what works well with Marco.
> 
> Some trivia: I pulled the name Dominique McLean as the Central Combines's star player since that is the real name of SonicFox, the professional fighting game player who went into Injustice 2, picked up Captain Cold (who the meta marked as a joke character), and turned Captain Cold into a menace in the Injustice 2 meta for a while. A lot of how I'll be writing Leonard in fight scenes later on is based off of SonicFox's style with him, so I wanted to get a nod in early.


	4. Chapter 4: In Which Theo Learns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So. Much. Leonard. Snart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate writing chapter summaries, so I felt like the one there fit pretty well without giving everything away.

“So...what’s the plan for getting in?” Key asked, looking over the lip of the roof to look at the bank’s entrance.

“Well, I’m going to do the insufferable old man thing of answering a question with another question,” Captain Cold replied, making sure they were out of anyone’s vision. “Why did you go into the bank at night, yesterday?”

“I’m a nobody, when it comes to hero recognition,” she replied. “Who’s going to believe someone, dressed entirely in black, when they say hey, I’m investigating the missing money thing too, lemme into the bank please? Nobody.”

Captain Cold hummed in response, nodding slightly (so slight that, if she wasn’t looking for it, she would’ve missed it). 

They had broken off into teams: Heatwave got paired up with Pied Piper and Weather Wizard, Mirror Master had Mirror Apprentice and Trickster, and Cold had stuck himself with her (despite Weather Wizard’s protests). Heatwave’s group was in charge of grabbing gear, whatever that meant (she had politely declined to add anything to their list when they asked. She was pretty sure they were stealing things), while Mirror Master was poking in on some of the Rogues’ connections to see if anyone they knew had been approached about cleaning the money. Cold had insisted on taking her back to the bank to follow up on the lead she’d found in the surveillance data and she didn’t find herself protesting.

“We’ve got some options,” he replied. “We can’t take advantage of your hero status to get in because you’ve got no rep. Doubt that even if you were a glory hog, taking all the rep for anything and everything you’d ever done, that that’d work anyway. You haven’t been in this life long enough to have built that much good rep that quickly, since you don’t have a team of PR associates to bump your rep farther. So, what options do you think can get us in past the police line?”

“Well,” she answered, kneeling next to his perch and turning to look at him. “Isn’t this your specialty?”

“Yeah, but I want to poke at what you know,” he replied. “Let’s me know what sort of tactics you’re inclined to take if a plan goes to shit.”

“Are you that sure that the plan in your head is going to go to shit that you’re already planning for when it goes to shit?” She asked.

Cold snorted. “Yes. Look, there are four steps for plans when it comes to being a super, no matter what side of the line you are.” He held out his fist, unfolding a finger with every number. “One, make the plan. Two, execute the plan. Three, expect the plan to go off the rails. Four, throw away the plan.”

Her eyes widened. Her body tensed and she remembered. Winters had said, before she went on this case, that she’d get a lesson in planning. Had he known that she’d team up with Captain Cold and his Rogues? Why hadn’t he said anything? Had  _ he _ planned for her to team up with the Rogues? Was this a test of her morality? Was she failing?

Cold put his hand on her shoulder and she snapped out of it. “You okay, Key?”

“I...when we’re done here, can we talk? I need an adult’s perspective and I have a feeling you’re the closest I’m going to get with my mentor’s scheming,” she answered. “Or maybe that’s my anxiety talking, who knows-”

“Key.” He shook her shoulder lightly, lightly squeezing. “We can talk later, when we’re further away from the cops down below, because if you panic right now, bad things are gonna happen for the both of us. So, throw me your solutions to the problem. How would you get in there?”

“Well...um...” She fidgeted, wiggling her fingers against her thigh. “Um...me solo? I’d wait ‘em out, know that eventually one of them is going to get hungry and then they’re all gonna go for donuts and coffee on tax dollars,” she replied. “At least, that’s how it’s worked before. Dunno if Central’s police force is similar-”

“It is. Glad you’re patient, too used to working with hot-heads,” Cold replied, snorting under his breath. “But, lemme raise you this: when’s the one time that nobody’s gonna notice a snowflake?”

Key frowned, thinking on it. “I...I don’t really know. When it snowed at school, everyone gets excited at the very first snowflake and it’s like bam! That snowflake’s a celebrity.”

“Nobody notices a snowflake when it’s in a blizzard, kid,” he answered, grinning at her. “So, my two plans? There’s a police station not too far away from here. Heatwave told me that you had a giggle about us stealing portapotties from police pigs, so my plan A is to steal a police officer’s uniform from some poor asshole’s locker and go for it.”

“A snowflake...in a blizzard.” She hummed. “Won’t they recognize your face?”

“Nothing SWAT gear can’t fix,” he replied, “I don’t have a chain smoker voice, so it won’t be too suspicious.”

“Wait, what kind of SWAT gear?” the Key asked.

“Higher end military sort of shit,” Cold answered. “The shit that’d have petty criminals dead if you aren’t trained right. I think most of the Central Force ain’t 100% trained right in using the equipment.”

She scrunched her nose under her helmet. “That’s gross as shit.”

“Ever since ex-warden of Iron Heights got elected mayor, yeah,” he replied. “Flash gives ‘im hell about it, but that ain’t new. Flash’s been giving that man hell for years. Plan B is to get really aggressive, go down there and make an opening for you when a piss window opens.”

She raised an eyebrow and let the skepticism flood her tone. “A piss window?”

“That’s the official term for when guards, soldiers, police, mercs, etc abandon their patrols, perimeter checks, whatever else have you, to go piss their pants from fright,” Cold chuckled, sardonically.

“Okay, let’s go with your plan A then since that’s a lot more quiet than doing whatever to create a piss window,” Key replied. “We don’t need the heat.” The corner of his mouth twitched. Was that a suppressed smirk? Had he been testing her on which one she’d give approval on? Did...did she pass? She squashed all of those thoughts. “So you dress up in SWAT gear and where does that leave me?” she asked.

“You tell me, kid.” He turned his attention back to the cops. “You’re a little short to be a cop and going in that get-up where they can see you is a no-go, since you look like an amateur bank robber in that get up. So what other tricks can you use?”

“I’ve got an invisibility charm,” she answered, “shadow you in. I dunno how long I’ll be able to keep invisible for though, especially since I’ll need energy to track the target through the system.”

“So we get in, lock ourselves in and everyone out, and you do your thing,” he replied. “Let me handle the idiots while you handle the system.”

“It’s...an alright plan,” she replied. “But it’s probably going to go to shit.”

“All plans do, Key. What makes or breaks a success is whether or not you can rebound from the plan going to shit.” He sat back on his heels. “Now, I’m going thieving. You wanna come for tips on how to steal or are you gonna stay here and keep an eye on things?”

“...it wouldn’t  _ hurt _ to know these things,” she replied, a diffident tone in her voice. “I might need to steal something from an actual supervillain someday.” She could imagine Winters’s disgusted snort at that line of thinking, along with what kind of lecture he’d give her on her  _ disgraceful  _ thinking.

Cold smirked. “Exactly my thoughts, kid.”

* * *

“What’re the donuts for?” Key asked, watching Captain Cold walk towards her with the SWAT gear on. They were holed up again in the "least favorite safe house", having needed somewhere to regroup after stealing the SWAT gear. Make sure they had their heads on straight and the plan in order.

“It’ll be suspicious when I saunter up and don’t have a squad,” he answered, “the donuts are a distraction. Everything about being a thief? It’s all distraction, then moving in when they’ve got their guard down.”

“So what, you keep the other Rogues as a distraction for everyone else?” She joked.

He smirked. “Why do you think I picked up the guy who could turn anything with glass involved into a warzone  _ and _ a getaway route to begin my crew with? The mind games Mirror Master can play with people is a damn good distraction while I ice vaults open to get the cash.” Captain Cold snorted. “And it makes Tuesday poker nights interesting.”

Key hummed, turning that over in her head. “Y’know, I haven’t really...heard of team ups between villains that work out, before. You hear all the time about people like Lex Luthor grabbing a bunch of villains-”

“Okay, their first mistake there is teaming up with Luthor,” he answered. “See, you don’t go into a team up or a crew without a pretense of caring about each other, at least caring about what happens when the other person gets caught. You’ve talked with them, planned with them, sometimes cracked open a beer with them if it gets personal and friendly, so what’s gonna happen when that person gets caught? You gotta care about that, if you want a good partnership going. Even if you’re as antisocial as I was, twenty years back, swearing up and down that I’d never team up with anybody again, you at least got to care about what happens when that person squeals, tattles about the job. So, you keep ‘em safe, for that much at least, until the job’s over. Luthor? Would sooner kill you, lie about the team up, do whatever his money can to hush everything up, than care about anyone he’s teamed up with. Lot of villains, Luthor included, don’t  _ care _ about people, even if it’s people they’ve teamed up with. Only time Luthor plays nice is when someone else is in charge, but that’s only because he’s either milking that person’s plan for everything it’s got or he wants to get everyone else on that crew to help him boot the person in charge.”

“Not the kind of guy to play poker with then,” she replied.

“Only if you cheat, kid, and have a method of cheating that is far out of my fucking skill set,” he answered, “and if you have something like that up your sleeve, share with the rest of us because God damn, the asshole deserves to be knocked down a hundred pegs.”

“I’ll think about it,” she replied, “though...s’weird to have Captain Cold get all...mushy on me.” She cleared her throat, speaking with what she was aiming to be a comically deep voice. “The reason the Rogues work...is because we care about each other.”

“You asked, kid, I’m just being honest,” he snickered. “‘Sides, I didn’t think I’d be what you’d consider the closest person you’ve got to an adult, even if it was panic induced.”

“Are we really talking about this now when the job-”

“Key, if you’ve got shit on your mind while on a job, it’s gonna go sideways much quicker,” he replied, “especially since you mentioned anxiety. Last time I let one of my Rogues on a job when they were anxious, we ended up with Pied Piper summoning every Goddamn cat in Central City and had to dig him out of a cat pile in the middle of a job because Piper had the loot at the bottom of a pile with three hundred plus cats, give or take a hundred and fifty cats joining the pile  _ after _ it’d been fucking formed. With your power set, I ain’t risking a panic attack in the middle of the job, so, spill.”

She inhaled deeply, sitting on a stool at the counter. “So. My mentor is an immortal sorcerer. I wanna say, via observation and educated guessing, that he’s from around 5000 BCE. He knows a lot of stuff about magic and without him, I probably would’ve gone crazy after my incident.” She exhaled shakily, biting her lip. “Long story short, the reason why I can do what I can with tech is because I have a magic key – a literal  _ fucking key _ -” she paused, trying to keep herself calm. She purposely doesn’t look at Captain Cold, doesn’t watch his face, because she knows she’ll break down crying from the anxiety of guessing what he’s thinking if she does. That she’s pathetic. That she’s a hopeless case that can’t do anything fucking right. Maybe something along the lines of things her step-mom used to say to her. “This key that just...responds to my mental commands, embedded in my back. I think about what I want to do with tech, it happens. I want to make a toaster pop prematurely, boom bam, easy as blinking. And when I’m around computers, it’s just...y’know that cliche thing, in all those novels and tv shows and movies, where the new baby telepath gets overwhelmed by the thoughts of everyone around them? I get that, but around computers, robots, anything with a long complicated string of programming and a storage of data and I think that’s worse than being a telepath because at least people’s thoughts are  _ human _ and mortal: short, brief. Code? Code can go on for days and days, I lost days, maybe weeks because I couldn’t escape a recursive function. Without my mentor popping me into a magic pocket dimension – don’t ask, I don’t know how or why he has one to begin with – and slowly getting me used to being around anything with coding? I’d probably be dead, my brain fried to hell and back, and just...dead.”

“So you think you owe him.” Not a question, a solemn statement from the man who wore a parka as a uniform in the midwest in August.  _ August _ . She snorted.

“I do owe him. So I...I went in, 100% when he offered to be my mentor. Dr. Fate scares the crap out of me with his Be Not Afraid Biblical angel shit and no other magic-using member of the Justice League has been seen in almost a year. Magic isn’t exactly Aquaman’s forte and it’s not like we have any other confirmed Leaguers with actual spell-slinging, which is the part of my power set I have trouble with, so I jumped at what I could get,” she replied. “I...I tried it his way. He said play nice with cops, be a good girl and stick with the law, the law above all else, the law is virtue, no matter the context.” She screwed her eyes shut, trying not to cry. “I...I tried. He said I had a responsibility, that I was so young that I couldn’t know what was right and what was wrong, that the disgust I felt at reading forum posts online, about Green Arrow or Batman taking out a mugger or stopping a holdup at a grocery store should’ve been felt towards the people perpetuating the crime and not at Green Arrow and Batman, because they’re the ones who saved the day. But...I can’t help but think they didn’t. Some family out there starved that night because their dad didn’t come home, got arrested by men too big for their boots. And with their tech, Green Arrow and Batman have to be rich, right? Richer than I can even imagine, than you can imagine with all the bank robberies. I bet, for every purchase they make to make their gear, to supposedly save the day, they could feed or take care of someone in need.”

She sighed wetly, unable to keep a choked sob out of her sigh with her shoulders trembling. “But they  _ don’t _ . And I’m not supposed to think like that, as a hero. If I wanna help people, I have to be on the law’s side at every point-”

“No you fucking don’t,” Cold barked. He must have moved while she’d been speaking, because she heard his voice from her left instead of her right. “Kid...Key, that’s not how this has to be at all. Your mentor? Sounds like a Goddamn nut case. Law is virtue, my fucking ass. You be a hero because you wanna help people, make the world a better place? Go for it and if that aligns with the law, throw yourself a party because that’ll be an easy day for you. Take this with as much salt and disbelief as you want, but from personal observation, doing the right thing, all that good stuff that makes the world a better place for people to live in? It’s the hardest fucking shit in the world. I know I couldn’t do it, on a large scale, and I’m Captain fucking Cold, the average human Joe shmuck who goes up against the Flash, a guy hopped up on superspeed, on a weekly fucking basis. But your mentor’s an ass to make you feel like you’ve gotta scrap who you are, what you believe in, to be a hero.”

She fell silent, biting her lip. She tried to calm her breathing, her hands clenching the lip of the stool’s seat. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale...exhale.

“I...when my mentor pointed me towards this case,” she stated, slowly to make sure she didn’t trip over her words, “he told me that I’d have a lesson about plans.”

“If I ever meet this asshole, I’m gonna have  _ words  _ with him about sending fourteen year olds alone to go fight,” Cold replied. “But...he said you’d have a lesson about plans. I gave you one, on the roof, before you spaced out on me.”

“I was panicking, I shut down when I panic in the open,” she replied. “I...I don’t know if he planned on me, teaming up with you and the Rogues. By everything he’s told me, he’d hate you guys because he’d think you can’t make up your minds about what side of morality you’re on. So...I started asking myself if I failed whatever test he’s testing me with with this case. Fallen angel sort of thing.”

She jumped slightly, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up, seeing Captain Cold with his goggles hanging around his neck and the hood of his parka pulled down.

“You wanna know what I think, Key?” he asked. He paused. It took her a minute or so to realize he was pausing to wait for her answer.

She took a deep breath, slowly nodding and saying, “What do you think, Captain?”

“I think, from what I’ve heard, your mentor’s an ass and you should only take some of his lessons,” he replied. “Great, he helped you so that you didn’t die from data overload in your head and taught you how to sling some spells. Hoo-fucking-ray. You don’t owe him for that. He offered to do that and he never gave a price for it, did he?”

“...no. No he didn’t.”

“Shit’s in his court then, because if he was actually smart about this grooming bullshit, he should’ve,” he replied. “Way I see it, you owe him nothing and you’re in need of an upgrade, in terms of people showing you the ropes to this superhero lifestyle. When this job is over, I can call the Flash-”

She tensed up and he stopped speaking, probably feeling her shoulders rise a centimeter or two under his hand. He waited a moment, tilting his head and watching her. She felt his blue eyes cut through her helmet and she looked at the wall behind him to recenter herself.

“Never thought I’d see any hero type scared of the Flash,” he drawled. “I ain’t gonna poke at it if you don’t wanna share it. But he’s the only hero I can get in contact with without getting arrested on the spot. I can set up a meeting and I will stand right next to you, the whole time. He makes a move that makes you uncomfortable, pushes too far, I will  _ ice _ him. I may have a truce with the guy, but if he does anything that makes a kid like you – who doesn’t even gurgle when an asshole like Heatwave’s  _ choking _ you – feel unsafe and uncomfortable, then that’s on his ass. But you need to get out of the situation you’re in, because your mentor? Doesn’t sound good for you. Sure, maybe he’s a good guy and might be the best mentor for somebody else out there, but you sound like you’re not doing so hot under his mentoring.”

“I uh...could always be a Rogue,” she said, her voice quiet. “I mean...what’re vaults to a girl who can register herself as a security admin with a thought? Laser grids to someone who can make herself invisible to them?”

“I won’t lie,” he replied, “I’ve thought about it. You in the Rogues could put us ahead in this game, farther than I could dream of, with what you know how to do with your powers now and what you could do.”

She jerked her head up, looking at him. 

He smirked, chuckling under his breath. “I ain’t scared of you and what you can do. I sat with Weather Wizard and his wand for months, getting his thick head out of his ass and getting him to have better control of it. I steal books for Piper so he can refine his hypnotism gig. I even let Trickster have the toy out of cereal boxes, just so she has more shit to tinker with. It ain’t my first time at the rodeo, helping a kid figure their shit out. I’ve been giving you tips, pointers, lessons, because you might choose to join up with us at the end of this. But I’m not going to force you to join up. When you cross that line, it has to be because  _ you _ choose to. My sister doesn’t have a criminal record and every time I’m in the can, I’m thankful of that, every day I’m in there. Being a Rogue, it’s not easy, it’s not rainbows and gumdrops and sunshine. Sometimes, we’ll be missing because we get hurt, get caught, or have to lie low.” He pat her shoulder, backing out of her personal space. “Think about it. I don’t want an answer now.”

“Okay,” she replied, feeling much younger and smaller than she was. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

 


	5. In Which Theo Thinks Far Too Much

The Key followed him into the bank. She paid attention to how he held himself – it was damn near hard as hell to see _any_ of the Captain Cold she got to know over the last (almost) two days. His surliness was gone, replaced by a friendly manner as he put down the donuts and started addressing cops by their names. To her, it didn’t seem to matter what he said, but the how – the adaptation of his icy drawling into a teasing one when accusing people of forgetting him with whatever alias name he gave himself, the smile in his voice behind the black scarf covering his lower face, his body language that made him seem like he owned the place, knew everybody, and knew it too. And everyone seemed to either buy his act or be too happy at the sight of donuts to really care.

Back at the least favorite safe house, they’d establish that she’d keep a hand on his upper back the whole way in, so he had a way to know where she was and how to maneuver with her being invisible around him. They practiced in the safe house, without the invisibility and pressure of the guards, just so they’d be certain that it was going to be alright. They found a rhythm, after much stumbling to get into one.

They slowly, cautiously, made their way back to the security hub and Cold shut them inside after assuring the guy on shift that they’d take over for a moment while he got one of the donuts.

“You’ve got a hundred and eighty three seconds,” he muttered and she became visible, touching a keyboard and closing her eyes. She dives in, faithful keyboard appearing at her fingertips once she falls into the server.

/inspect element:trail  
Unknown command. Need to specify, too many trails, not enough presence of mind to track every single one through the city.

/inspect element:hack_trail  
That’s getting closer, actual data coming up to her now. Lot of failed hackers trying to get into the system, evidence of amateurs who think themselves too big for their obnoxious black and red gamer chairs brushing up against the ice of the bank’s security system just to _look_ at it. Like this had been their trip to the local zoo and the bank’s security had been the tiger. And it is a tiger out of a classic spy movie, well trained in its behaviors to take down anyone that its coding said to. She needs to find who the tiger failed to stop.

/inspect log:security  
Smart hacker would have cleared their tracks. Smart and prideful would clear their tracks, but not put their spot in. Theo is going to assume both and look for marks of both.

The commands go on and on and on into rabbit holes until Theo finds the right one and _dives_.

She eventually comes up for metaphorical air in a laptop, hearing the bustle around her-it, not her, this isn’t her body and she is not going to fall into the trap of thinking that it is. She opens files, reading reading reading the text files and looking looking looking at image files (the selfie from the vault was in the laptop, notably). Plans and maps, graphs, data, projections for this and that, but where is something of importance, where, where, where- _there_ , a schedule. She takes the data, holding out a metaphorical hand and swiping along the data to copy it. She takes the copy and stores it away, and then prepares to do the more difficult thing: lean out of the laptop, so far from her body, to confirm the identity of the person holding the laptop.

She inhales sharply and pushes, like ripping a bandaid. She feels woozy, but she’s leaning out of the laptop that holds her consciousness. She looks and she sees the young woman from the vault holding the bag the laptop is in, popping bubble gum while waiting for a train while the station’s light makes her buns look like pixel art. The train on the schedule, the one set to take her to Gotham, a warehouse in Gotham along the bay area, warehouse 22b. Theo pulls herself back, back into the laptop and back through the network of the city, all the way back to the security room.

The Key fell to her knees, panting heavily. She stayed there a moment before opening her eyes, feeling blood trickling from her nose.

Captain Cold is still there, watching the door. It looked like he took the cold gun out of its secret pouch in his vest, holding it in his hands. She waved to him and his attention snapped to her.

“I think I’ve got the target,” she muttered. “She’s going to be in Gotham, Warehouse 22B in the Bay Area tomorrow night. We’ll never catch her train leaving Central, not...not without a lot of heat but...we can catch a ride through the looking glass, can’t we?”

His chuckle gives her every answer she needed to hear. He pat her shoulder, muttering, “Good job, kid.”

* * *

Everyone meandered back to the least favorite safe house to find Captain Cold cooking dinner and the Key sprawled on the couch.

Heatwave and Mirror Master traded smiles while they thought nobody was looking (Theo caught it and discreetly added the data to the wtf.doc file, with the call she had overheard from Heatwave earlier). During dinner, Heatwave stepped out to make a call. Theo was too tired to follow or give a damn about more weird calls with any Allen character.

* * *

**Mirror World, ???** **  
** **August 16th, 2014**

The pro about the long ride through the Mirror World was that it gave a lot of time to discuss the plan. Not as long as it would’ve been actually riding the train rather than sitting in the train’s shiny reflective surface (something about the settings on Mirror Master’s gun being able to change how they perceive time in the Mirror World. Key hadn’t been able to follow the discussion very well, between a lot of jargon being tossed at her in an overtly friendly manner from Mirror Master – which was unsettling to her in its own right – and Weather Wizard glaring at her every time he wasn’t paying attention to what Captain Cold had to say). Mirror Master and Mirror Apprentice were maintaining some kind of...bubble that would make sure that the mirror versions of what was being reflected in the train wouldn’t _smash_ into them as they passed cars and trees and buildings and everything else on their ride to Gotham. Key had a sneaking suspicion that the bubble would also keep them hidden, but nobody told her that detail outright. They had to keep _some_ secrets for themselves, especially from someone who might be on the other side of the conflict.

“Two pronged attack,” Cold replied, “one team with Mirror Master, one team with Mirror Apprentice – don’t give me shit, kid, until you settle on a new name, you’re the Apprentice. Current theory, from what we’ve seen of our target’s movements, is that she can only jump from shit connected to the internet. Wizard, Key, you’re on team EMP. Wizard, stir up a storm, make it look like a storm shut off the power. Don’t actually cut the power because then the Bats will come looking and we are not in a state to take on the Bats. Key, you cut off the power and keep it off. Your backup will be Wizard and Mirror Apprentice. I’d usually assign Piper to help with that, but he’s not available tonight and we’re on a time crunch. Rest of us will be with Mirror Master. Once we pop out, break off into teams of two: Heatwave you’re with me, Master and Trickster being the other team. We’ll be chasing the target into a trap Mirror Master and Trickster set up.”

“What happens when we catch the target?” Weather Wizard asked, giving Key a side eye.

“Key and I talked that out,” he answered. “And she’s agreeable to us humiliating the target, everybody getting a punch or two in after the target’s brought down. Heavy bruising is acceptable, but no fractures or long time injuries. Then, she’s gonna video us making a statement about any other punks from messing with our scores and she’s gonna put that up on every social media site that takes video. In return for her mass broadcasting that, we hand the target into the pigs and wipe our hands clean of this shit.”

Wizard hummed noncommittally. “Why not kill the target and not risk the revenge plot?”

Cold took off his goggles, letting them hang around his neck. He fixed Weather Wizard with his eyes, the look in his dark blue eyes firm and disappointed. “Weather Wizard, Rogues don’t kill unless it’s necessary. Punk ass nobody, swiping our score? S’not necessary. If, say, we were gunning down someone who had tricked us into killing a kid or someone who took out one of our own, that’s different. But killing just to prove we’re the big dog is bullshit. We’ve talked about this, Wizard.”

“I know,” he drawled, snorting to signal some distaste he felt with the subject. “Just wanted to see if anything changed.”

Captain Cold raised one of his bushy, old man eyebrows before putting back on his thick, large goggles. “Anyone else have problems with the plan?” he asked, looking around at the rest of the Rogues. Key shifted, watching the others. Mirror Master and Mirror Apprentice were standing next to each other, the two monitoring the strange bubble

“The only thing I have a problem with is your ease of swearing around teenagers,” Mirror Master grumbled. He sighed. “But that’s never going to change, so...letting it go. The plan is fine. Trickster and I have been working on a routine for trapping the Flash, so it’ll be a good rehearsal.”

“Hell yeah!” Trickster pumped her fist into the air. Key noticed that she was wearing her coat sleeves rolled up today, as well as replacing the plaid pants she wore last time Key saw her with a knee length bubble skirt. It was cute, still maintaining the yellow and gold plaid pattern. “Gotta pull out all the tricks when a meta’s involved. No offense, Key.”

“I’m magic so I take zero offense,” she snickered. “Shit on metas all you like.”

She smiled under her helmet, kind of...relaxing around these people. She could see herself as one of them. Their humor was good, outside the puns, they had a good code that she could get along with (it encouraged her punching cops, which she was down for), and robbing banks wasn’t that bad morally when you think about it. All the money’s insured, she could probably take her share of the loot (the part that she didn’t need to live on, anyways) and give it to help people around Central City. She had already learned a lot from Cold tossing her scraps of tips and knowledge. She could have a future here.

The only problem she could see was her eventually getting frustrated at not being able to do enough. She had these powers and she could do so much for the world. If she practiced hard enough, maybe she’d be able to siphon all the world’s wealth and redistribute it so that every person could have the necessary things to live: a house, clean water, food, healthcare, the whole bundle. But...that’d bring too much heat down on her. She’d be targeted by the Justice League and brought down, locked up. What would happen to the Rogues if she brought on that heat? It wouldn’t go well. Cold told her that they kept themselves small scale and with mostly moral rules for a reason: to keep from being dogpiled by every hero in the area. In the world.

There had to be some way, to change the world to make it better. She had plenty of time to think on the how and the why and if she ever figured it out, she’d share it with everyone who would listen.

Theo jumped, feeling a hand on her shoulder. She looked over, seeing Cold as the culprit.

“Givin’ us the cold shoulder now, kid?” he asked.

She shook her head, chuckling, “Nah. Thinking about what you said, earlier.”

Captain Cold gave a noncommittal hum, nodding and removing his hand. “You remember the signal?”

“Yes sir,” she chirped.

He hummed again, nodding. Giving her space, probably didn’t want to pressure her overtly. There was subtle pressure (Weather Wizard glaring, the warm fuzzies she had from the others including her and being included in the plan, her opinion being asked for during the plan’s creation, etc), sure, but he wasn’t solely responsible for that or, hell, might’ve not been _aware_ of what pressure he was causing. Not the place to have a conversation about it anyway, hell she’d probably want to avoid having a conversation about it because how do you even _vocalize_ these things? _“Hi, I’m perceiving you as more friendly than I’m used to people being and it’s exerting pressure on me to like you but I kind of WANT to like you because you’re cool, pun intended just for you as a friendship maneuver”_ ? _“Hey, I’m not used to people being nice to me, I sometimes almost tear up at waitresses doing their job when I’m not paying attention to pushing my emotions into a corner, can you be less nice to me when it’s not your job to be nice to me”_?

She tilted her head to the right, pushing those thoughts in the back of her head. She could think that through at another time. She tilted her head to the left, listening to Heatwave and Mirror Master going back and forth. The two were bantering about flashpoints and melting points for some reason (she must’ve spaced out during the build up in that conversation). She let herself grin, letting herself learn from their bickering.

Theo could get used to this.

* * *

Key felt herself tense following Weather Wizard and Mirror Apprentice along the Mirror World. They’d left the train and the others (Captain Cold and Weather Wizard having a whole conversation in glares as they separated), transitioning to building windows and transitioning along the blank voids between the reflection.

“Mimic my footsteps exactly,” Mirror Apprentice stated. Had to have been the first time he’d spoken in her presence. Was that a Scottish accent? “I ain’t as patient as the big M, so I ain’t gonna give you the chatterin’ for the nearly blind bullshit. Key, you’re not as used to the Mirror World as Wizzie is, you keep as close to me as ye can without becoming a leech. Wizzie, bring up the back, if you see a Bat, don’t go shootin’ ‘em on sight because I’m keeping up the camo and if you shoot _out_ of the camo, they got reason to investigate and I don’t wanna deal with fuckin’ Bats in my belfry, got it?”

“I got it,” Wizard growled. Key was a little surprised, seeing the taller guy defer to Mirror Apprentice. It was weird, especially when he questioned Cold in every instance she’d seen the two in and, far as she could tell, Cold was the big dog of the group.

“Emergency rules for the Mirror World, just in case, someone nodded off when the big M explained it to you two, at some point. Nobody’s allowed to die in the Mirror World – I mean, you can, by all means after the job’s done you can try – but rule is nobody dies in the Mirror World because it’ll stink up the place. The MW doesn’t make organic matter and organic shit doesn’t do good here, long term,” he replied as he moved. Key followed behind him, paying attention to where he was walking and splitting her attention between his steps and his words. “After a while, yer body will disappear. We don’t know where it goes or whatever, but it’ll just poof after stinking up the place for about five days. Big M thinks it’s because the Mirror World refreshes constantly to fit the real world, minus the people and the corpse ain’t an inorganic object for the Mirror World to reflect, so it just erases it. Haven’t found where it shits out the stuff it erases yet. Next thing is that if you fall, make noise as yer fallin’ and especially when you land so we can find ya. In the MW, sound carries like it does if you shouted into a real big wine glass. It’ll echo – like stop here a second.” He stopped their train. They could hear, in oddly clear clarity, Captain Cold and Heatwave placing bets on who was gonna hit more targets.

“It’s a flamethrower, you don’t need accuracy with a flamethrower!” Captain Cold shouted, his voice echoing all around Key. She grit her teeth, trying not to get her senses overloaded from all the echoing.

“That?” Mirror Apprentice asked. “Is exactly what I’m talkin’ about. In the real world, they’d be the same distance of about five blocks away. There ain’t any noise interference from a city load of people in the MW, so combined with the glass acoustics, your voice is gonna carry real fuckin’ far and will bombard people who are quiet. Making noise or being close to someone making noise will sort of make a bubble where you won’t be bombarded by noise elsewhere. No, I don’t know why that is. Big M does, but unless you wanna hear a whole bunch of sound mechanical nonsense, I don’t recommend asking.”

He sidestepped, grabbing Key’s wrist and pulling her behind him. She felt her lips turn up slightly and tears in her eyes before she pushed that down. “Next is somethin’ I had to learn the hard way. If you take a mirror object – a reflection of a gold vase, for example – out of the MW, it’s gonna poof into smoke. Objects in here aren’t real and they’re like styrofoam blocks: cheap, easy to destroy, and ultimately in the hypothetical that you _can_ get it to stay solid in the real world, probably bad for the environment. Also: yes, trees are organic. No, we don’t know why the MW can mimic trees and plants, but animals and people are out of the question. Don’t ask me, don’t ask the big M because you’ll get him started on the Spectrum of Reality and nobody, me most of all, wants him rambling about the Green and the Red and the _Grey_.”

“So...don’t die, make noise if you get lost, and mirror stuff is as real as an imaginary friend,” Key replied, “right?”

“Right. Thank God, ye learned quicker than Tricks. She was slow on this stuff since it didn’t make conventional science sense.” Mirror Apprentice snorted. “Real Wonderland sort of affair, the Mirror World, lots of rules that don’t make complete sense when you try to apply real world logic. Closer to video game logic than actual logic.”

Key hummed and nodded, keeping her attention at his feet so she wouldn’t miss a step. He seemed to get...not more relaxed, but more loose. Might’ve been expecting her to fall off sooner or not listen or not understand his direction, expecting the worst? To her, he _seemed_ like the cynical type. But then, this was the first time she’d even seen him open his mouth, so he probably still has surprises up his sleeve just like Captain Cold.

She bit her tongue, crouching alongside Mirror Apprentice. Of course her brain was all focused on the man: he had put more healthy belief in her than her stepmother and Winters had combined. Winters pushed her to be better, taught her some things, but in ways that she was starting to suspect were unhealthy. This had been the longest Winters had let her out from under him, no whispering in her head. He’d promised he’d let her go on this case without all the whispers, but...it gave her time to think and Captain Cold, human blue collar thief, had put a solid crack into the polished image Baron Winters, immortal human (questionable) sorcerer, had built.


	6. In Which Theo

####  **Gotham, NY** **  
** **August 16th, 2014**

There was a devil’s advocate argument to be had, she told herself as she followed Mirror Apprentice out of the Mirror World and settle into a perch on top of a shipping crate in the Gotham warehouse where their thief should be. Captain Cold could just be trying to get her to the “dark” side, the side of sinners (as Winters would put it), “corrupt” her. Didn’t line up with the Captain’s words, unless if Captain Cold was lying through his slightly crooked teeth.

She waited for a signal, closing her eyes and letting her tech magic comb through the warehouse until she could find it. Captain Cold’s cold gun, where the signal would be-

Theo’s eyes widened as she felt out muggy details of a memory. Recent, by the amount of clarity, him standing over a table with her and the two discussing him installing a voice trigger into his cold gun that she could sense with her magic as a subtle enough signal. She felt sticky spikes of warmth in her chest – fondness. But not hers, hers wasn’t sticky like that (she usually felt fondness in her throat, curled up like a satisfied cat made out of the happy tears she was holding back). There was only one person’s fondness that could be, with where the memory was attached and who was holding the gun now.

She felt the gun  _ click _ , an almost silent diagnostic system check on the gun’s part, and she knew it was go time. That was the signal. She opened her eyes, giving a thumbs up to Wizard besides her on her right. He  _ grinned _ and lifted his wand as she closed her eyes again. His wand gave her static in her ear, but she could ignore it. She reached out with her powers and shut every electronic in the warehouse off as she could hear thunder rumble above them. She was caught in an act of vulnerability: she had to stay like this to make sure that everything would stay off, sending constant signals to the five servers, three portable generators, the fifteen cell phones, the wifi extender (pirating wifi from the city library through a system of wifi extenders throughout the city, bolstered by magic runes), the three laptops, security cameras, and the lights. However, with her attention so thin, she’d have to sit like this. She couldn’t extend herself to the guns in the room.

She had to trust the Rogues to keep watching her back, like they had been thus far. She had to trust Mirror Apprentice and Weather Wizard to keep to orders, not kill her (not like she could stop Wizard any way – his wand was beyond her ability to stop. Same with Mirror Apprentice’s knife), and to make sure nothing else (no one else) got her.

_ “This plan has a lot of big asks and teamwork with people you don’t know that well,” _ Cold had said, standing over that table.  _ “You okay with that?” _

_ “I think I want to see what it’d be like to be part of this team,” _ she had answered.

So what she was seeing was Weather Wizard keeping a hand on her shoulder, as if reminding himself where she was while he was getting lost in the storm outside. Mirror Apprentice had set up a mirror at her left side, popping into it to take out people before they could get to a position where they could see their group’s position. Key hadn’t seen him as a stealth assailant, but it was something she could see with all the reflective surfaces in the warehouse: lenses, light bulbs, polished reflective metal panels on the sides of the servers, and he knew what else as well as she could feel every electronic- No. No, someone just attached a new computerized device into the play, she could feel it, she didn’t have it in her to shut it off with everything else (frantic fingers pressing the power button of a cell phone over and over again, loudly cursing, bouncing from laptop to laptop. Key had to keep them  _ all _ shut off, the target couldn’t get out).

It was an electronic scope. Far back, out of the range of where everything else had been so she hadn’t felt it in the rush to get everything off. She felt it now as it turned on, strapped on with a cold accented voice (couldn’t tell, too spread out, too much on her head) whispering gibberish into her head through her magic. She sensed where the scope pointed, throwing her attention back there herself.

She could feel in the air hot and cold spiralling in the air behind her, felt Heatwave’s laughter in her stomach and Cold’s confidence in her sternum, knowing Captain Cold and Heatwave were going through the warehouse and chasing down the target. She drifted her mind back towards the scope and Theo felt panic rise in her throat as she connected the dots.

“Weather Wizard,” she muttered, touching the hand on her shoulder. “L-Launch me at Cold’s position-”

“I don’t take-”

“S-sniper! Lining a shot!” She snapped. “I’m going to stop it! W-won’t be able to get th-therrrrrrrrre fast enough on m-my own, so launch me-”

The winds bolstered around her and she was  _ thrown _ backwards. She could feel the burn of the electronic scope as she passed in front of its stare, curling into a defensive ball. She cried out. Bullet in the left shoulder. Last ditch maneuver time. She threw all of her energy. Pop. Pop. Pop. Everything she’d been holding off exploded from energy overload, light blue filling her vision. She could feel blood almost flushing out of her nose and she grinned.

Then Theo’s head hit the ground. Her helmet, loose from the 100+ mph winds, fell off with her consciousness.


	7. /data_stream

####  **Gotham, NY** **  
****August 18, 2014**

/data_stream  
heart at sleeping rate. brain pattern waking. heart at sleeping rate. brain pattern awake. heart at waking rate. waking. waking. irregular heartbeat, stress impacting patient. heartbeat data rising. hospital data, flooding. room 250 has patient with brain cancer, age 7. room 466 has patient with mesothelioma, age 78. room 13 has patient with extreme hypothermia, age 35. all patient data, flooding. too much, too much, too much-

“Shush, my little one. You must be so exhausted,” a drawling voice cuts through the data.

/identify_being:speaking(mother)

Soft hands touch her cheeks she now feels, long and cold fingernails lightly digging into her jawbone. “Sleep, my little Key. Let your dreams shield you from the data. Dream of something pretty for me.” Lips press against her forehead, through her skull, to her brain. “Dream of what you want to be.”

/answer:being(hero, subtype: defender. armor plates along limbs, body, light blue glowing veins

“Ah, still on about that? I would have thought that you would’ve been rewritten from that, from where you’ve been.” Chuckling. “No no, I see now. You _almost_ were written for Mechanus. I’m glad you weren’t – you’re so much more interesting this way. Muddling through the grey is a much better look for you. But show me. Show me what made you question the corrupted modron’s words.”

/answer:being(human, subtype:thief)

“Oh? How atypical, given your desires to be a hero.” Elegant, long fingers stroking through her hair, nerve endings lighting up in pleasant sensations.

/elaboration:thief=hero

/elaboration:being thief does not mean not hero

“Define hero for me, little one.” She’s lifted up from where she’s laying down, put onto a lap.

/define:hero(hero is one who holds fellow people as priority; holds betterment of people as priority)

“And you’ve identified Leonard Snart as a hero, have you?” Laughter ripples through the lap under her. “He’s stolen from his fellow people. That doesn’t sound like holding betterment of people as a priority to me, little one.”

/counter_argument:steals for his family; family is a sub-group of people; world change is not attainable goal for one human being

“He killed his father a decade ago.”

/not family; family=rogues

The fingernails trail through her hair, along her scalp. “Ah. I see...you speak truth, I see that. I wonder if the Judges would share your perspective. I see in your heart, you want so badly to have a family.” A pixel of nerves on her cheek feels wet. “One I cannot give you myself. Would you lie to your own being – being a hero – to be a part of these Rogues?”

/no

“No?”

/define:key(a small piece of metal shaped to fit wards of a singular particular lock; locks can be replicated to be in many places; but are same regardless)

Cooing, the voice asks, “You would sacrifice your own happiness to follow your path?”

/aggressive_quip:like mother like daughter

Bittersweet laughter. “Still have your hapless wit.”

/counter_argument:full of hap

Another kiss is given to her forehead, her skull, and her frontal lobes. “I love you, Theophania. I know you don’t think so, but I do. I do what I can, because I love your hap wit. I want to see you grow.” She’s laid back down, covers brought up around her. “Sleep well, little Theo. Let your dreams take wing.”

* * *

She slowly woke up. A ceiling greeted her, gray-scale panels looking cheap and new. The lights didn’t flicker, the inner workings glittering a song of half remembered dreams. She hadn’t had a dream with her “mother” since her incident. She snorted. Seemed fitting that her “mother” only showed up in her life as a fake and meaningless dream whenever something happened to her.

She felt the hum of the electronic machines around her, monitoring everything about her: her heartbeat, her brainwaves, her everything. Her key was cold as ever, curling with her spine – it was one of those rare, numb instances where she could feel the teeth of the key shifting around the spine: the key’s teeth curling and uncurling around her spinal processes (the spiny bits you’d feel if you’d ran a hand over your back – the parts that made a seven year old Theo believe she was part dinosaur with how pointy her spinal processes had felt. But that had just been malnutrition, not dinosaur heritage) along her lumbar spine and the sacrum.

Groggily, she realized she wasn’t in the Key costume, the heaviness of her tech and everything not dragging her into the cot like it had with her and the couch in the least favorite safe house. No, she was in a hospital scrub, the knot poking into the key, one of the teeth shifting back and forth across it in almost a...playing motion. Her left shoulder was heavy as it usually was, but that was from bandages and who knew what else medical gunk in there. She twitched her left finger, gritting her teeth.

“They said she was clear to leave when she woke up!” Shrieked a voice from her left. She weakly moved her head, seeing the door to the hospital room she was in. Outside, she could see through the window, stood an exhausted doctor (old, white, male, wrinkly) along with a blonde haired woman. The voice seemed to belong to the woman, her lips moving as more words were shrieked, their sound muffled through the door. “The nurse said my niece was waking up and I want to see her when she wakes up! She’s going to be so scared when she wakes up, she needs some family!”

“We told you, we wanted to keep her for longer-”

“Longer to experiment on her! I am not letting you and the Feds torture my niece because she has weird metal on her back!” The woman turned to look in through the room, her blue eyes flashing. “See! She’s awake, let me see her.” She leaned forward, whispering something in the doctor paled and he opened the door. The blonde woman walked in with a very smug smile, the smugness slipping off quickly as she looked over Theo.

“Hey, kiddo, it’s me, your Auntie Lisa. You must be dying to see your dad, considering you saved his life-”

“I ain’t anybody’s dad, Leese, cool your tits,” Captain Cold drawled. He slowly walked into the room. His goggles were gone, his costume gone, stripped from his armor and left in a ragged parka and blue jeans. He had a five o’clock shadow that wasn’t there the last time she saw him, hair dusting his cheeks in scratchy patches and his blue eyes looked over at her bed. “Hey, kid.”

“Told you to call me Theo,” she rasped, slowly going to sit up.

Faster than she would’ve given him credit for, he put his hand on her right shoulder and gently pushed her back into the bed.

“Must’ve slipped my mind,” he replied. “How’re you feelin’, Theo?”

“Groggy. Need a coffee,” she replied. “Then I’ll be good as new.”

“Sure, maybe after a couple months of physical therapy,” he snapped. She jumped lightly in the hospital cot, wincing. Cold sighed, running a hand through his hair in a short, irritated motion. “Theo. Why the hell did you get between me and a Goddamn sniper bullet?”

“That’s the hero thing to do,” she answered.

“That what your mentor teach you?”

“No,” Theo answered. “That’s what I believe.”

He huffed. “Fucking hero types, I swear to God-”

“Lenny!” Lisa slapped his shoulder, walking up closer to him. “Show a little gratitude, she saved your life-”

“And fucked up her shoulder in the process!” He barked. “She could’ve died if it wasn’t for the Mirrors and Axel figuring out a workaround to keep her from bleeding out while we got her to the hospital. Then, we all almost get arrested before _he_ -”

“Careful, Leonard. Y’know what they say: speak of the devil and he appears,” a voice chirped from the hallway. A scarlet figure entered the room and Theo felt herself start to hyperventilate.

Theo felt her eyes tear up slightly as Cold – _Leonard_ her mind whispered – got between her and the newcomer. “Back off, Flash. I said you gotta keep a distance from her.”

“Would’ve been able to if someone-” he nodded at Lisa “-didn’t threaten the staff.”

Lisa shrugged with an amount of nonchalance that Theo was jealous of at the moment. “The doctor was being an ass.”

“Regardless, it made people uncomfortable and people being uncomfortable will bring back Batman and you guys don’t want that,” Flash replied. “Better me than him since we all know each other.” He leaned, trying to see her behind Leonard. “Is that her?”

“Yeah and if you don’t want to be an icicle, you’ll stay right where you are,” he answered. “You scare her enough and last thing we need is her ripping open her wounds from you causing her to jump. I ain’t gonna have a kid’s blood on my hands, even indirectly. You say the staff’s twitchy? Keep watch outside then.”

The Flash sighed (at a normal speed, she didn’t know that was possible for him) and stepped outside. She let out a soft sigh of relief. Leonard turned back around, pulling up a chair to her cot.

“So, here’s the situation, kid,” he replied, “you’ve got some options, thanks to Heatwave being a blabbermouth and us being a little surrounded. We just got reformed: Flash pulled his strings and Batman’s financier is willing to pay the Rogues a wage to cover Central City and be on call for planet-wide emergencies. So, officially and off the books, Rogues are now heroes since it’s gonna be more financially stable than robbing banks is gonna be in the future.” Leonard snorted. “More money, less time wasted in jail, so it adds up quicker than us being stubborn and sticking to bank robbery. Let’s us help each other better: we can now legally get Pipes out of his shitty home situation. Mirror Master’s legally getting both his kids, finally. It’s a weird thought: Heatwave and Mirror Master argued that we should go straight, reform, since we have all these kids around depending on us to keep ‘em alive. Not the first time they’ve pulled this shit on me, but now it’s the first time that it actually had facts and pieces falling into place.”

“I’m...happy for you all,” Theo replied. “This sounds like a definite improvement.”

“Eh, debatable, but I’m giving it a chance before I get judgemental,” he replied. “Anyways, you’ve got options. Flash and Batman say you’ve got real potential, based off of what I’ve said, for being a part of some stealthy baby hero team. They set you up on missions, you go out and do good, blah blah blah. They’d find you a mentor in the Justice League and you’d be on golden glory path to herodom.” She almost cracked a smile at how it almost sounded like “hero-dumb”.

“Okay,” she replied, “what’s option two?”

Leonard looked away from her, looking over her and at the wall over across the room. “Heatwave dared me to a challenge. Something I’ve never done before, a sort of...special kind of project. I’ve never taken a special interest in directly mentoring any kid: Heatwave always looked after Pipes, Mirror Master had the baby Compact, and Weather Wizard and Trickster weren’t interested in having an adult looking out for them like that. Heatwave told me that having you around the last couple days has been good for me and I won’t agree with him.” He sighed. “I also won’t say he’s wrong. You’ve got potential, Theo: you’re skilled, you’ve got the makings of smarts, and you’re willing to learn things that aren’t traditionally hero shit. I don’t think I’d be wasting my time, bein’ your mentor. Besides-” he smirked “-I’d get a bonus for it.”

“Like..a cash bonus?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Yup,” he replied.

“So...okay, sell me on being your mentee,” she replied. “Because you had a really great persuasive thing going until giggling about the fact that me being your sidekick gets you a cash bonus from the guy who funds Batman, who could probably put his money to better use by helping actual people in need.” She tried to cross her arms, but winced when trying to move her left arm. “Lisa, right?”

“That’s me, Lisa Snart, ice skating coach and best looking woman in the building,” she answered, almost drawling but her tone was too cheerful to be true drawling.

“I need you to cross your arms for me so you can be my sarcastic stare down on your...brother, right? Please tell me he’s the little brother, that’d make my month.” Theo slowly let herself grin.

Leonard’s shoulders fell from their tense position as Lisa laughed. “Sure kid,” she replied, crossing her arms and looking suitably sarcastic and skeptical, almost mirroring Theo’s face completely.

“Thank you,” Theo replied, trying not to start snorting from laughter. “But...yeah. Leonard – Mr. Snart? I’m gonna need a better argument than-” she put on a purposefully comically deep voice “-you’ve got potential and I get cash for playing teach.”

“Kid- Key- Theo.” Leonard sighed, putting his right hand across his face at eye level and slowly dragging it downwards. “You’re smart, but you’re not inventive. Little prodding and you can get creative, but you need the prodding. I never graduated high school, but I’m still able to put together a gun that shoots absolute zero and figure out a way to make every Rogue’s theme work in a group plan. I’m creative, gutsy, and a hell of a thief. Being a hell of a thief requires both creativity and guts in spades, while also being able to know your target. I could teach you shit that no hero type they set you up with will even _think_ about, put you at an advantage against all the rest of the mini-hero types out there. And I won’t ever try to sell you on law above everything else, because I think we both know that’s absolute horseshit.”

Theo looked down at her stomach, the hints of a smile falling off her face. “Oh...oh yeah. I also already have a mentor-”

“This came for you in our mail,” Lisa replied, holding out an envelope. “Wouldn’t open for us, so...probably yours since I hear you’re magic?”

“Yeah, probably has an aura ID spell attached,” she answered, “he never did teach me the process behind that, the fucker.” She reached out with her good arm, but Leonard intercepted it and handed it to her so she wouldn’t have to get up.

“Thanks,” she replied, flicking her thumb over the wax seal that had a leopard curled around it. The wax seal melted, quickly forming into a small three-dimensional leopard that rested on her bed. The whole room watched it in quiet shock as Theo just rolled her eyes. “He’s dramatic and a show-off,” she replied, verbally hand-waving the whole thing. “Let’s see what he’s got to say...” She fished her hand into the envelope and with some hand gymnastics, she slowly managed to get the letter out of the envelope.

_Dear Theophania Soliani,_

_I knew that this might be a possibility. That you had not grown from our time together and my tutelage. But I see now that this was an inevitability. You could not get over your fear and prejudice of speedsters to keep to the side of saints, of true heroism, and have not grown for even an instance. I see now that you have been an inefficient usage of my time, which could have better been spent in balancing the sides of good and evil. Both sides have valid parts of them, you know, and I had hoped that I was growing you out of your idiotic beliefs so that you would be another piece on the side of saints so that things were more evenly balanced._

_But no. No you had to stay to your beliefs, to be an indecisive_ _piece_ _waste of space somewhere in between saint and sinner. You will be another chore on my list should you stay that way, so I wash my hands of responsibility for you._

_If you wish to be a brat of a child who cannot see the true morality of the world, then I will not waste more time on you and will deal with you when the time is right._

_Sincerely,_

_Baron Winters_

“He’s...he’s going to kill me,” she muttered. She bit her lip. “Deal with me when the time is right? He’s going to kill me.” She dropped the envelope against the bed, the little wax leopard running to it. Theo covered her face with her hand, trying to block out all sensations of the real world so she could cry in the privacy of the computer monitoring her status in the room. She let herself drift into the computer, leaving her body as dead weight, and simply started screaming inside the computer.

She was screwed. Her stepmother disowned her months ago, she had had nowhere to go but Winters and now Winters is out the window and the Flash was right there he was right there and easily able to speed in and vibrate his hand in her heart just like that green blur did to her dad, right in front of her when she was ten. Winters could do the same thing, he had a super-speed spell, he could teleport her into Wintersgate with ease and then hunt her down in the labyrinthine corridors of Wintersgate (just like she had watched him do for so many “sinners” – were they really sinners or had he lied?), make her regret her sins, then vibrate her heart right out of her chest, _just like her dad_ -

 _Click_.

Her attention snaps back to her body, responding to the diagnostic click in the cold gun almost automatically due to how its sudden appearance started her. She rushes back to her body, seeing Leonard holding the cold gun in his left hand and touching her right shoulder with his right.

“Theo,” he replied, “me being your mentor or not, that old bastard’s gonna have to get through us to get to you. That’s the risk of taking a bullet for a Rogue: got a hundred percent chance of becoming one. If you want to.”

She leaned her head into his arm, laughing and crying every emotion out of her body at once.


	8. In Which Recovery Begins

####  **Central City, MO** **  
****September 5th, 2014**

Theo stretched, grinning at her mentor. “It’s nice to get out of the house for a change,” she chirped, “not that I don’t like the favorite safe house, but I was getting stir crazy and was about to try to turn the toaster into a robot pug to see if I could.”

“Lisa likes that toaster,” Leonard replied, hands in his pockets. “You pull that toaster apart and I’ll get pineapple pizza on hockey night.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, leaning towards him (as much as she could with her healing shoulder. Which was vastly better than it had been a week ago). “You _wouldn’t_.”

“You wanna try me when my sister’s involved, punk?” he asked, answering her lean with his own conspiratorial lean towards her. “You think I’m bad for nagging you about your physical therapy routines, you should see me when Leese’s happiness is at stake. Her last ex-boyfriend? Very nice cheekbones for an ice sculpture.” He looked dead serious, but the corner of his lips were slightly upturned and giving away a hint of a smirk.

Theo snorted, standing up straight again. “Haven’t told me where we’re going yet, Snart.”

“That’s Mr. Snart to you,” he replied primly, walking. “Taking you to a friend of the family’s.”

“Didn’t know our roguish family had many friends outside of it,” she replied, raising her eyebrows.

“You think we cook up our fashion taste on our own?” he asked.

Theo waggled her eyebrows and said, “No, I thought you all rolled through a combined circus, survival store, and fire department to get your outfits.”

“I wear a parka because I use a cold gun,” Leonard drawled, “I’m practical, sweetheart.”

“That’s very admirable in a world full of capes, I’ll give you that,” she replied. “So what...you’re bringing me to meet your tailor?”

“Something like that,” he answered. “Your old costume’s trash. Did the old ass make you make that yourself?”

“So you’ve noticed arts and crafts isn’t my specialty,” she replied. “Yeah, I kind of looked like a walking computer without a monitor...or like one of those old brick cell phones. It was _bad_.”

“The attempt to put together an air conditioning unit without instructions gave you away on your lack of arts and crafts licenses,” he replied, giving a soft, amused huff, “points for originality in putting one of my old cold guns in the core part of the unit though. And kid, if you think your old costume was bad, wait until you see Scudder’s old look. I swear, his herodom costume was horrifically blue and red, his old helmet looked like the little dingle you’d see on top of cop cars. Took me and Gambi forever to talk him into green and orange.”

Theo snorted. “Good thing my old costume burned to a crisp when you guys took me to a hospital, because now there’s no evidence that I ever wore it.”

“Nah, we’ve got pictures.” He ruffled her hair. “Hard copy pictures. In a secret scrapbook.”

“I should’ve known, the criminal Rogues already having plans to blackmail me,” she replied. “What’s the ransom on the pictures? Ten mill?”

“Fifty,” he replied, “and it’d be cheating if you stole a cent from every bank account in the world to get that much, so don’t even try.”

“I’d never, I’m a baby hero, remember?” She punched him in the shoulder with her good arm. “I’m _your_ baby hero.”

“God save me from the diaper changing,” he snorted.

They walked up to a storefront for a fancy looking place. Theo would’ve mistaken it for a jewelry store at first glance, with all the glass cases, but they held bow ties and suit pieces. A woman dressed in a well-made, fitted suit worked at the counter, counting up the till for the day.

“Welcome to Paul Gambi’s Suits for the Working Class, where we make clothes for the person you want to be,” she replied not looking up from the counter. “How can I help you?”

“Appointment with Mr. Gambi for Leonard Snart,” he answered. She looked up and her brown eyes widened behind her wide rim glasses.

“Y-yes, Mr. Snart, apologies for not recognizing you,” she sputtered. She walked into the back as Theo looked around.

“Case the joint, kid,” Leonard replied, “whatcha spot?”

“Security camera domes,” Theo answered, putting a hand on her chin, “on the ceiling behind the counter and another one in the back by the changing rooms. I think I spotted a hidden panel to a Montgomery 3000 somewhere behind the English cut suits. Cheated a little there by poking with my bits, but case with all eyes, right?”

“Damn straight, you got it, you use it. Missed the motion detector on the case with the masterpiece bowler hat Gambi made, the thing’s worth ten thousand dollars. And the high end shotgun underneath the secretary’s desk.”

Theo raised her eyebrows. “Wait. Is the motion detector on the case or the hat worth ten thousand dollars?”

“Oh, the motion detector, it’s got a wireless system that’s synced up to five different computers throughout the store. No, the hat’s worth about twenty thousand dollars if you sell to the right people, the right people being anyone who knows what a Gambi hat is worth. So, League of Shadows and other various high end crime syndicates, since I think that’s the hat that also doubles as a high end bomb if you know the voice code,” Leonard answered.

“...why would you build a hat bomb?” she asked.

A voice behind her answered, “For taste and surprise, little snowflake.” She turned around, seeing a tall man with a large nose with brown hair peppered with grey ends and a thin mustache along his lip. He wore a very nice blue suit with a light pink shirt under the jacket, a measuring tape hanging along his neck like an old cartoon woman would wear a feather boa. “Leonard, it’s been so long. How is your suit holding up?”

“Damn good, Paulie, damn good,” he answered, taking his hand out of his pocket and shaking the tailor’s hand. “Theo, this is Paul Gambi, best damn tailor you’ll meet in your life. Keeps me and all the Rogues alive on a daily basis, with his work.”

“Oh, flattery will not get you a discount, Leonard, but I won’t stop you from trying,” Paul laughed. “So, is this the small sidekick I hear you’re taking on?”

“I’m giving her pointers, she’s a bit big for being a sidekick,” Leonard replied, “should we move to the back room, to talk more in depth?”

“Ah! Yes, I forgot how private you could be.” Paul clapped his hands, walking past them. Leonard nodded after him and Theo followed Paul through the store.

She heard Leonard behind her as she walked through the aisles of very well made suits and fancy wear. Paul put his hand on a wall and a panel slid open underneath his hand followed by a green light. The wall opened up and Paul stepped into a secret room with grey walls and ceilings.

“Vocal identification required,” an automated voice rang out, a microphone popping out of the wall.

“Paul Gambi,” he answered. A tic passed and two machine guns popped out of the ceiling, both trained on Theo and Leonard. Theo held out her left hand, putting her right hand back on Leonard’s chest with wide eyes. The two machine guns’ ammo cases started to empty, but Leonard pat Theo’s hand. “And two guests.” The machine guns flipped into the ceiling. “Thought she took after you, Leonard.”

“Then you’re lucky she didn’t ice over your security system and just gave them a tiny bit of weight loss,” Leonard answered, “don’t prank a Rogue, Gambi, I would’ve thought you learned better after Weather Wizard gave you static shock clinging to you for a month.”

“It’s a good way to see what people are packing,” Paul replied. “People perform best when faced with the unexpected. Now, since when were the Rogues recruiting metas?”

“Since now, though this is our planned one and only.”

“Mmmmhmmm, just like how Mr. Scudder was the only partner you planned to take on. You Rogues adopt people like how Iron Heights adopts draconian punishments.” Paul brought them back into a back room – a sort of workshop. “Now. Are we thinking matching parkas?”

“She’s not ice themed,” Leonard replied. “Hasn’t earned the cold gun yet.”

“Ah, but let the lady speak, Mr. Snart.” Paul turned to her, sizing her up and making her feel small. “What is your name, young lady?”

Theo sent a look to Leonard and Leonard gave her a nod. “My name’s Theophania Soliani, but I like going by Theo.”

“What is your theme? Every Rogue has a theme, from what I’ve learned over the years.” Paul slowly began to circle her. She stood her ground, keeping an eye on him as Leonard walked over to a chair and sat down in it, putting his chest against the back of the chair.

“I um...I guess, technology? I’m a technopath,” she replied. “I can make a toaster pop like you could blink. Computers are my thing, I’d have to have a power supply and a data storage unit in my suit.”

“I see,” Paul replied. “That will be easy. Miniaturized power generator in the chest of the suit, have it generate additional power off of your kinetic energy, so when you run and move you can recharge your battery. Hmmm...I’ll have to sketch out the blueprints, but there will be a way for you to charge your suit in case you don’t move enough in a situation. Hmmm...the charging mechanism will be an interesting challenge. What other technology will you need?”

“Um...I’m used to having a computer processor on me at all times when I’m working,” she replied, “I used to wear a huge backpack for it, but teach here doesn’t think that’s responsible.”

“I’m a target, hit me,” Leonard chirped in a high pitched tone. “Hit me! Hit me! I’m a bigger fucking target than the S on Superman’s chest!”

“Arguably that’s probably a purposeful target,” Paul replied. “Superman wants to be hit in the chest, it’s better he’s hit than someone else in what I perceive to be his heroic opinion. In any case, Leonard is still right. Such a thing would be a large perceived weakness and I look forward to trying to figure out how to camouflage that in your suit. Can you think of anything else you might need?”

“Pockets,” Theo blurted out, “so many pockets. Deep pockets, shallow pockets, utility belt pockets, _pockets_.”

Paul laughed, “I can do such a thing with ease, though you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t coat you in pockets. But I will make sure you have both obvious and discreet storage space. What sort of color scheme were you thinking?”

“I’ve always worn black,” she replied, “but...I think this costume I kind of...wanna highlight that a little with some...white and blue?” She rocked back and forth on her feet, looking at Leonard out of the corner of her eye.

His face was unreadable. It was his resting “I’m casing everything going on around me” (which Theo was classing as a Leonard Snart specific bitchface subtype at this point) face that really didn’t tell her anything. She flicked her eyes away from his face to her shoes so she wouldn’t over-analyze his expression.

Paul looked back and forth between them. “And here I thought there wouldn’t be anything to visually tie you two together! Good, good, it’s always good when there’s a family resemblance. Kid Flash looks a little like Flash, you will look a little like our good Captain! Excellent. No direct ice theme or visual reference beyond colors, but...yes. Yes, yes, I can see it. And you need a way to keep your identity secret.”

“Yeah, I was thinking a helmet,” she replied, “easier to keep stuff like com units and cameras up there. I was thinking like a modified flip up motorcycle helmet? Something modular so I can flip it up and eat because it never occurred to me with my old helmet that hey, I might eat on the job and may need a way to eat without revealing my secret ID or y’know...sitting in a corner. I got lucky once, but I’m not gonna rely on that happening every time.”

“You’re...going to have to give me a reference on the motorcycle helmet because motorcycle fashion was never something I studied at fashion school,” he replied, looking a little shell-shocked by her rambling. Theo guessed it was the specificity of it or that it was that Paul knew Leonard and was having trouble connecting her with him. Which was fine because she was having trouble with that (not that she didn’t want him to be her mentor on super-living, but _what_ was his motivation, was it _just_ money or something else. She blamed him on her lost sleep with all these questions).

Theo gave Paul a nod, having gotten lost in her own head for a minute. “I said flip up motorcycle helmet, right? Kind of spaced.”

“You okay, kid?” Leonard drawled. “Not having another pain cramp in your shoulder, are you?”

“Nah, I’m good. I’ve been good, only moving the bad shoulder as little as possible,” she replied. “See I’m responsible. Responsible enough to take-”

“Nope,” Leonard replied, “points for dogged determination. But you’re not on active duty yet.”

“Damn it.” She crossed her arms, doing her best not to visibly pout since that’d mean he’d get satisfaction.

Theo sighed, pulling out her phone and pulling up the helmet style, showing it to Paul.

Paul’s eyes lit up. “I can work with this.”

* * *

Theo laid down on her bed, her head up against the wall with her chin to her chest as she typed on the laptop laying on her chest. Someone was wrong on the alien sightings blog she frequented, claiming that the Blue Beetle from the 40’s was using an alien device to be the Blue Beetle.

“Wrong ass motherfucker,” she grumbled to herself, “the guy up and said it was ancient Egyptian magic. For a guy with the name Arbitrator, you sure have a way of not making it easy to be civil.”

She’d been writing and erasing a response for what felt like hours after dinner (Mick had made a very good pot of curry and she was a very happy camper from this. Leonard called her a traitor for being happy about spicy food. It wasn’t her fault she had a working tongue) when her computer screen lit up bright highlighter yellow.

Theo pushed the laptop away from her onto the bed, getting ready to scream for the seven very armed people downstairs (she was 99% certain that Lisa had ice generating skates stashed in her collection of ice skates. She could feel them and an echo of Lisa’s laughter every time she passed Lisa’s room), but a hand covered her mouth.

The woman who was somewhat involved in starting this whole mess was muffling her mouth after having erupted from Theo’s computer screen. She whispered, “I’m so glad I found you, I wanted to say I was sorry for how you almost got killed-”

The woman yelped as Theo bit her hand. They glared at each other a moment before the woman sighed. “I didn’t come here to start a fight. I wanted to make my peace with the king of Central City for one of my men shooting you and for, apparently, committing a huge no-no in the tri-state area.” She crossed her arms. “How was I supposed to know that Captain Cold ruled the criminal element of the city with an icy iron fist and crossing him means nobody will do business with me in this area?”

“Up-and-coming criminal mastermind?” Theo asked, staying still with her body. She was slowly trying to figure out how to flicker the light downstairs to tip off the Rogues, but singling the one lightbulb was like trying to find a needle in a haystack with all the _technology_ in this household. If she flicked all the lightbulbs, this woman would notice since there were lightbulbs in the room.

“Yeah, I’m new to the states,” the woman answered. “You can call me Hack. I’m going to be the most powerful super-villain you’ll ever meet.”

“Considering there’s a super-villain downstairs who could, theoretically, cause a tornado in my stomach if I cheat at cards, I kind of doubt that. A little. Though, will admit, the teleporting through the Internet trick? Classy. That trick you pulled at the bank would’ve worked, had you had a different bank.”

“I know!” Hack grumbled. “I had it all worked out and I never should’ve listened to that old man.”

Theo raised an eyebrow. “Old man?”

“I had everything prime and set – my first gig was gonna be in Russia in 2010. Get in, get out, knock a world power on its ass for a bit,” Hack replied, “but then this old man walks in and gives me an offer. I do errands for him for four years and he said he’d set me up with a once in a lifetime opportunity. Get me a crew, make me the boss of the crew, but then he goes and gives the order to shoot you behind my back.” Hack crossed her arms. “It’s not good business to kill kids. Even rival team kids.”

“Just because I’ve heard the phrase ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’, did this old man look like a Las Vegas magic show tried to eat him, but then threw him up?” Theo asked.

“Now that you mention it,” Hack answered, snorting, “yeah. Yeah, God he had no fashion sense. Dark purple silk suit, bright pink tie, slicked back hair. Even had a pet leopard.”

“I know that old man. His name’s Baron Winters, just in case you wanted to hunt him down better,” Theo replied. “He’s the one that used to be my teacher, before I joined up with the Rogues.” Theo hummed. “I’ve got a proposition for you, Hack.”

“Oh? If you say once in a lifetime opportunity, I’m gonna have to say nope. Got my fill of those, thanks. Once in a lifetime does mean once in a lifetime,” Hack replied.

Theo snorted. “Nah, this is more of a dime a dozen sort of deal. Team-ups happen all the time, but good ones happen as long as we both care about each other’s goal. So, our hypothetical dream goal here is knocking Winters down several pegs. You’re mobile and not currently healing from a bullet wound in your shoulder. I’m currently in a spot where I’ve got a lot of room to grow connections to ask people in high places. Either of us hear about where Winters is holed up, since he lives in a magic mansion that moves at his command, we team up and work together. Outside of that, though, your business is your business and mine is mine. It’s a if it comes up agreement.”

Hack hummed. “I’ll think about it. You got a name I should call you?”

“Key is my alias,” she replied. “Though, second proposal.”

“I’m listening, I’m listening, you’re a very proposing teenager.”

She stuck her tongue out at Hack. “I like having deals. You’ve seen my face now. I’ve seen yours. We don’t tell anyone anything as best we can and just keep each other’s secret.”

“That’s easier to agree on, since I figure you were the one that set the Rogues on me in Gotham,” Hack answered, “can’t always rely on a teen getting shot to distract the angry guys with the ice gun and the flamethrower.”

“Cold gun,” she corrected Hack. “It shoots cold energy rather than freezing things. It’s a very important distinction.”

“Uh huh, sure, like insect vs. bugs,” Hack replied, “but yeah. You keep my secret, I keep yours.”

“Take my hand, philos,” Key replied, holding out her hand. “We can shake on it, swear on the Styx.”

“Sure, I’ll swear on whatever sticks you want me to swear on,” Hack chuckled, taking the fourteen year old’s hand.

Key smirked. “Alright. Repeat after me. I swear on the Styx that I will not reveal any aspect of the identity of the person I know as Hack to anyone I know, under any circumstances.”

“I swear on the sticks that I will not reveal any aspect of the identity of the person I know as Key to anyone I know, under any circumstances,” Hack replied, smiling like she thought this was a joke. Theo smirked as light blue smoke came from the union of their hands.

Key muttered, “Good to know that pronunciation matters over all else on that front.” She looked up at a slightly confused Hack, who was looking at the blue smoke really confused. “You, my friend, just swore on one of the most mystical rivers in all creation and if you break the promise, you’ll wish the Rogues had gotten a hold of you instead.”

Hack looked at her hand as if it was burning. Judging by the burning sensation in Theo’s hand, she was terrified of _that_ . “What the _shit_ -”

“I take my secret identity very seriously. I wear a helmet for a reason and I don’t like uninvited guests when I least expect them,” Key replied. “I take my secret identity seriously enough to trick you to invoke an ancient soul binding contract. One I also swore. I can’t reveal you, you can’t reveal me. Now we both have insurance beyond our words since I think we both know that words can be pretty, but we need something to back it up. You can feel the contract, can’t you? You know I’m not lying.”

“You’re...you’re not,” Hack replied. “I don’t like this. I don’t like-”

“Not being in control,” Key quipped. “Common techie problem. It’s why we like tech. Think on my other proposal and get out of here. You have a hundred and eighty two seconds to leave before someone discovers you. You’ll find an email address on your spreadsheet schedule. Use that to contact me with your answer when you’ve thought it out. The contract we just did is only about what we swore on. If you don’t want to team up with me on the Winters case, that’s fine. Live your life, wherever. But you know I’ve got more of an idea on him than you ever will and you can’t take on that ass by yourself. It’s a crew job and I’m building a crew for it.” Key smiled. “You, the Rogues...I’m going to need an army, I think.”

“I’m just gonna go now,” Hack replied, “this is too weird.”

“Go the way you came then,” Key replied.

Hack jumped into the laptop and Theo relaxed. She didn’t know how long she could keep posturing and bullshitting like that. What was she saying, taking on Winters? What did she know about taking on immortal sorcerers? What kind of impulsive move was that, invoking ancient rituals nobody’s used in centuries to make sure Hack didn’t talk? Sure, she wanted to knock Winters down a few pegs and sure, she was terrified that Hack was gonna spill, but did she go too far in her “faking it until you make it” strategy?

“Hey, Jingles, you doing okay?” Trickster- no, _Axel_ asked her through her door.

She took a deep breath. “I’m chill,” she lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of Hackity-Hack! It's been an adventure working on this. I'm honestly surprised it's gotten the attention that it has, but I'm really glad it did! The next one will be Cold Front, the first chapter coming out tomorrow (tomorrow at the day of posting this, so 3/25/18). If you liked this and want to see more of Theo and the Rogues, make sure you subscribe to the Low-Key series since there's more coming.


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